Denzel Washington on the 20-Year Journey 'Fences' Took to the Big Screen

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis are currently earning raves for the big screen adaptation of Fences, August Wilson’s seminal play. Their performances cap the project’s decades-long journey to the big screen. Watch Washington explain in the clip above.

Incredibly, Fences almost became a movie back in 1987. That’s when Paramount first acquired the film rights, during the same year Fences won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Drama. The studio intended for the film to star James Earl Jones, who would reprise his stage performance as Troy, the tough-talking Pittsburgh sanitation worker struggling to keep his family together, and the red-hot comedic actor Eddie Murphy, who was looking to cross over into drama and play Troy’s son Cory.

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That version never materialized, and it would take almost 20 years for the film to finally be adapted. Washington, who directs and stars in the new version, had previously played Troy for 13 weeks on Broadway and has been involved with Fences‘ for the last seven years.

Producer Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men, The Social Network) first sent him the film script, he explained to Yahoo Movies, but at that point, it just motivated him to do the play.

“So we did the play, it was a tremendous success again, like they had in the ’80s,” Washington said. “And then I said, ‘Okay, I know I can do the play. I know we can do the play. I know it works for us as a story to tell.’ It was still another three-and-a-half-year process for me convincing myself to get to a place where I was ready to do the film.”

Fences is now in theaters.