Sterling K. Brown will headline and executive produce Washington Black, the new series at Hulu based on Esi Edugyan’s novel, via The Hollywood Reporter. The series received a straight-to-series order at the streamer.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, writer Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (The Twighlight Zone) will be adapting the novel. The story is set to follow George Washington Black, a 19th Century eleven-year-old boy on a Barbados sugar plantation. After a sudden death sets out to threaten his life, he escapes and travels the world, finding adventure and love along the way.
Brown is set to play Medwin Harris, a Black refugee in Nova Scotia who travels the world after a traumatic childhood. Harris is also the de facto mayor of Black Halifax who prioritizes the community over everything except for his young protege Washington Black.
“Washington Black inspires me,” Brown told The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
The original novel was an international bestseller and was on the shortlist for the 2018 Booker Prize and the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Disney 20th Television acquired the rights to the novel in 2019.
Brown is currently filming the sixth and final season of This is Us for NBC. Washington Black has not received a release date for Hulu.