Common’s production company and Lionsgate have teamed up for a limited-series adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.
The recently discovered book tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, an 86-year-old survivor of the Middle Passage who was brought to America in 1927.
According to Deadline, this is the second project between Common’s Freedom Road Productions and Lionsgate. The Oscar winner’s production company has a television deal with Lionsgate and currently the pair are developing a TV adaptation of B. P. Reiter’s 1977 book, Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club.
Hurston’s Barracoon was published earlier this year after the discovery of an unpublished manuscript. The book is based on Hurston’s interviews with Cudjo, who was illegally smuggled from Africa on the last slave ship to the U.S.
