The 99 percent of us who didn’t make it out to the Hamptons this summer will get the opportunity to live vicariously through Benji from Sag Harbor. Colson Whitehead’s 2009 novel is currently in development as a TV series at HBO Max, per Deadline. Sag Harbor follows Benji Cooper, one of few Black students at his prestigious prep school in Manhattan, during the summer of 1985 in the Hamptons community of Sag Harbor. There, affluent African Americans carve out their own space on Long Island, and Benji experiences race and class in a different way. Daniel Beaty, the Obie Award–winning writer now also known as Koa, is attached to write the pilot. Laurence Fishburne and Helen Sugland’s Cinema Gypsy, which produces Kenya Barris’s Grown-ish and Black-ish, will also executive produce. “Colson is a once-in-a-generation author who has the unique ability to craft beautiful and authentic stories that captivate and transform readers, and Sag Harbor is a true expression of that gift,†said Katie O’Connell Marsh, vice-chair at Boat Rocker Studios. “We’re thrilled to be working with HBO Max, Cinema Gypsy, and Koa to bring this coming-of-age story to the screen.â€
The news comes following the release of Barry Jenkins’s Underground Railroad, an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s novel of the same name on Amazon Prime Video. Every streamer wants in on Whitehead’s work examining the history of racism in America. “I’m honored to partner with this wonderful team, and to adapt Colson’s beautiful book,†said Koa, per Deadline. “It’s a world and family rarely seen on screen, and that’s thrilling during these transformational times.â€