Denzel Washington is currently riding high in the saddle as The Magnificent Seven dominates the box office, but the Oscar winner isn’t done with 2016 just yet. In December, Paramount Pictures will release Fences, an adaptation of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play by August Wilson.
Washington and Viola Davis headlined a Broadway revival of Fences in 2010, and both actors will reprise their roles for the film, which Washington also directs. You can check out the first trailer for Fences below.
This is an incredibly intense teaser. It looks to be one of Washington’s most powerful and emotional performances in recent memory, and a nice change of pace from the more action-oriented fare that’s defined the past few years of his career.
With a supporting cast that also includes Jovan Adepo, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson and Saniyya Sydney, Fences is scheduled to open on December 25.
Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less.
denzel washington fences Viola Davis