Amazon Prime Video’s May slate of original series is a study in literary contrasts. On the one hand, we’ve got The Underground Railroad (May 14), a prestige limited series produced by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins (Twelve Years a Slave), adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, a lightly fantastical alt-history barnburner that imagines slaves escaping captivity via a network of literal subterranean locomotives. On the other, we’ve got Panic! (May 28). Based on the book by YA author Lauren Oliver, this exploitative thriller seeks to put attractive teens in scary situations as they seek to face their ultimate fears.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be first devoting my attention to the former. Beyond the involvement of Jenkins, The Underground Railroad is simply one of the most gripping novels I’ve read in the last decade, a book that grapples with America’s darkest legacy in a matter dripping with metaphor and meaning. The artful trailer certainly promises a lot, both in terms of the narrative (which follows the travails of Cora, who flees from a Georgia plantation pursued by the ruthless slavecatcher Ridgeway) and the sumptuous visuals. Amazon is clearly gunning for HBO prestige here:
Panic!, as its breathless title suggests, is a lot less high-minded, mixing a cast of unknown young actors with a deliriously silly premise: What if you could escape your boring, small town existence by winning a game that requires you to face — and overcome — various fear-inducing situations, from breaking into someone’s house to braving a night in a haunted house. What if, indeed. There’s no trailer for this one yet, but it certainly sounds built for bingeing.
Also arriving this month is Solos (May 21), an anthology series with a loosey-goosey concept (“The seven-part anthology series explores the strange, beautiful, heart-breaking, hilarious, wondrous truths of what it means to be human,” per a press release) and a frankly jaw-dropping cast, including Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Anthony Mackie, Dan Stevens, and Constance Wu.
All that and a bunch of old movies: Here’s everything coming to Amazon Prime Video in May 2021.
May 1
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Aliens (1986)
- Almost Famous (2000)
- Angels & Demons (2009)
- Betrayed (1988)
- Bound (1996)
- Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999)
- Dinosaur 13 (2014)
- Fascination (2004)
- Flight (2012)
- Flightplan (2005)
- Georgia Rule (2018)
- Green Zone (2010)
- Gunsight Ridge (1957)
- Hidalgo (2004)
- How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)
- Jumping the Broom (2011)
- Knowing (2009)
- Leatherheads (2008)
- Nanny Mcphee (2006)
- Nanny McPhee Returns (2010)
- One Fine Day (1996)
- Priest (2011)
- Reign Of Fire (2002)
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
- Resident Evil (2002)
- Rio (2011)
- Sahara (1983)
- Scent Of A Woman (1992)
- See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
- Shattered (1991)
- The Age of Adaline (2015)
- The Dalton Girls (1957)
- The Da Vinci Code (2006)
- The French Connection (1971)
- The Green Hornet (2011)
- The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)
- The Indian in the Cupboard (1995)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)
- The Outsider (1980)
- The Secret Life Of Bees (2008)
- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- The Sweetest Thing (2002)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- Two For The Money (2005)
- Unbreakable (2000)
- Vantage Point (2008)
May 5
- Skyfall (2012)
May 7
- The Boy From Medellín — Amazon Original Movie (2020)
- Breach (2020)
May 9
- Robot & Frank (2012)
May 13
- Saint Maud (2020)
May 14
- The Underground Railroad — Amazon Original Series: Season 1
May 19
- Red Dawn (2012)
- Trumbo (2015)
May 21
- P!nk: All I Know So Far — Amazon Original Movie (2021)
- Solos — Amazon Original Series: Limited Series
May 28
- Panic — Amazon Original Series: Season 1
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