Peele deal gives Amazon first look at series ideas

Jordan Peele, writer and director of the hit film “Get Out,” has signed a deal giving Amazon the first look at his ideas for television series, the company said this week.

The agreement with Peele, who won the Oscar for best original screenplay in March, is sure to grab the attention of the industry and Amazon’s streaming rival, Netflix, which has been making its own deals with talent like Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes and Barack and Michelle Obama.

Under the deal, Amazon will essentially have the right of first refusal for any of Peele’s TV series.

The move is Amazon’s biggest talent-related deal since Jennifer Salke joined the company in February to run Amazon Studios. Salke, who was previously an entertainment executive at NBC, is responsible for bringing new life to the streaming service, which is widely seen as lagging far behind Netflix. Under earlier management, Amazon seemed to be focused on passion projects with limited commercial appeal. Roy Price, the company’s former entertainment leader, was forced out after a producer made an allegation of sexual harassment against him last year.

Amazon also announced that Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight,” would direct all 11 episodes of its limited series, “The Underground Railroad,” adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

In a statement, Salke said the company “can’t wait to get started” on the project, and added, “Barry’s eye for character and sustained exhilarating, emotional storytelling style ensures that this project is in the right hands.”

Amazon has been courting Peele for months, including making commitments to a TV show and a documentary.

The company made a 10-episode, straight-to-series order for a show called “The Hunt,” for which Peele will serve as executive producer. According to Amazon, the series centers on a group of people living in New York in 1977 who vow to break up a band of Nazis trying to establish a Fourth Reich in the United States. The company also gave the go-ahead to a true-crime documentary series from Peele about Lorena Bobbitt, who made headlines after she cut off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, in 1993.

Amazon’s deal with Peele is limited to series projects. Peele, co-creator of the Comedy Central series “Key & Peele,” already has a first-look deal for films with Universal.