Spike Lee Says “Major Priority” Is Finally Making His Joe Louis Biopic Penned by ‘On The Waterfront’ Screenwriter

For Spike Lee, somewhere in his drawer, alongside a few other unrealized dream projects, sits “Save Us, Joe Louis,” a film he’s been trying to make for over two decades.

More enticingly, Oscar-winning screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who wrote “On the Waterfront,” penned the screenplay. Schulberg, in his nineties at the time, would call Lee regularly to ask if the film had been greenlit yet. “Spike, have you got the money?” Lee recalls him asking.

And yet, the film still hasn’t been made. Financing fell through, numerous times. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger was set to star as Schmeling. By 2006, there were murmurs of Terrence Howard getting involved, but that faded. Schulberg passed in 2009.

I thought the project was dead — which major studio would greenlight such an adult-oriented, and likely very pricey, film? And yet, here’s a new Los Angeles Times interview where Lee, promoting his latest film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” says his “major priority” now is to see the realization of “Save Us, Joe Louis.” He wants it to be his next film.

I promised Budd on his deathbed that I would get this made.

The story of Louis, the iconic boxer, and his rivalry with German heavyweight Max Schmeling is the kind of historical epic tailor-made for Lee — race, history, politics, and sport all mixed together.

The film would follow Louis and Schmeling from their first fight in 1936 — which Schmeling won, much to Hitler’s delight — to their rematch in 1938, when Louis demolished Schmeling in just over two minutes, sending the Nazi propaganda machine into panic mode. In between, there was a distanced friendship.

Right now, it remains a “what if,” but the fact that Lee is talking about it again means he’s still driven to make it. Wouldn’t it be something to get another film from Schulberg? From beyond the grave? An old-school Hollywood screenwriter having his script made into a film, decades later, in the age of IP. I can only dream of this happening.