Washington was, but he wanted to perform the play first before committing. A few years later, Rudin approached Washington with Wilson’s screenplay and asked him if he was interested in starring in it. Rudin produced the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, which starred Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington. An Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award-winner, his professional life has bridged Broadway and Hollywood for decades. In many aspects, Rudin was the right producer for the job. When Wilson died of liver cancer at the age of 60 in 2005, Fences had only inched closer to completion in that producer Scott Rudin had got involved with the project, and Wilson had continued to revise the screenplay over the years. Unfortunately, over the next two decades, attempts to mount the project by black directors led to a series of unsuccessful starts. Paramount was under no legal obligation to fulfill Wilson’s request, but the studio ultimately respected his wishes. Wilson wrote the screenplay himself, and he was very vocal in his belief that only a black director could capture the right tone for the film. Paramount Pictures originally optioned the play in 1987 as a potential vehicle for Eddie Murphy to portray Cory.
Photo by David Lee – © 2016 Paramount Pictures Corporation. Jovan Adepo as Cory and Denzel Washington as Troy Maxson in Fences. Wilson’s stark depiction of the hard decisions faced by an African American family prior to the Civil Rights Movement has made Fences an enduring favorite with critics and audiences, and the play is widely taught in American colleges.
Troy struggles with what he believes is best for Cory’s future, and decisions he makes for his own future that lead him to be at odds with his otherwise supportive wife, Rose. He comes into conflict with his teenage son, Cory, who has been offered a college football scholarship. During its 1987 Broadway run it won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards, including Best Play.įences focuses on Troy Maxson, a 53 year-old former Negro Leagues baseball player who provides for his family by working as a garbage man in Pittsburgh. However, this year’s Oscar nomination for playwright August Wilson for the screenplay of Fences, an adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, came under unique circumstances – Wilson passed away in 2005, meaning that the nomination comes nearly twelve years after his death, and long before the film, which was directed by and stars Denzel Washington, went into production.Īmong Wilson’s many celebrated works, his 1983 play Fences is his most acclaimed and most popular. Several screenwriters have been nominated for Best Original or Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Awards posthumously, including Bridget O’Connor, who was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
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