Hulu has announced that it has ordered a limited series that will be adapting the bestselling novel by Esi Edugyan, Washington Black, which will star three-time Emmy Award winner and This is Us star, Sterling K. Brown, who will also executive produce.
Washington Black will be made into a nine-episode limited series produced by 20th Television. The series will be written by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (Twilight Zone, Strange Adventures), who will also act as an executive producer alongside Brown under the Meadows Productions banner. Washington Black is also executive produced by The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, Lindsay Williams, and DJ Goldberg, Anthony Hemmingway, and Jennifer Johnson. Edugyan serves as co-producer.
“Bringing Esi Edugyan’s prize-winning book to television has been a passion project for Selwyn and Sterling, and we are grateful to Hulu for their belief in this wildly ambitious and aspirational project,” commented Karey Burke, President of 20th Television. “Our relationship with the amazing Sterling K. Brown dates all the way back to The People V. OJ and of course This Is Us, so we couldn’t be happier to be continuing our collaboration with him as both a producer and a performer on this beautiful series.”
Hinds went on to add:
“The world has felt like we’re living in darkest night, stumbling to find and hold onto a North Star to make a way forward. Like many of us, I’ve felt lost far too often. But writing ‘Washington Black’ these past two years has guided me back home. This story of a young Black boy who becomes a globe-trotting artist, scientist and inventor. This tale of the true human superpowers: hope, love, empathy, persistence. Those ideas have been my North Star. The promise that we will get through the long night and take flight like Wash under the light of the sun. This show has been a conduit to that faith for those of us who’ve been creating it, and we’re beyond thrilled to be about the business of sharing it with all of you.”
Brown also spoke about his role in the upcoming series, saying how much the story of Washington Black meant to him. "Washington Black inspires me. This young man and the adventure he undertakes remind me of how the power of imagination and the creativity of artistry can transform the world in which we live. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds has taken the transcendent words of Esi Edugyan and created a spectacular universe that brings to fruition the power of possibility.”
Brown is the only actor to be cast in the Hulu series so far, and there is no official release date for Washington Black yet Read the official description of the upcoming limited series below.
“Washington Black” is the tale of a singular young man: pirate ship-stowaway-turned-initiate; rugged explorer of uncharted territory; survivor of the tundra, the desert and the high seas; an engineer; an inventor; an artist. He traverses the globe – from searing Barbados heat to Arctic ice – and finds an unexpected and fraught love along the way. Though he meets many an enigmatic figure in his travels, Wash quickly finds that he alone is the engine of his hero’s journey – a triumphant voyage of daring dreams, steampunk and the magic of the human heart.