In 1991, The New York Times reported on the tortuous path of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fences” to the screen. The headline was “Did Hollywood Sit on ‘Fences’?” I wrote that article, concluding that after four years of false starts the project was at last getting closer to production.

Obviously that didn’t happen, as now, 25 years later and more than a decade after Wilson’s death, “Fences” has finally opened. Even by Hollywood standards, that’s a long development period.

The saga started in 1987, when Eddie Murphy, then among the country’s highest-grossing movie stars, saw the Broadway production of “Fences,” a 1950s family drama about a former Negro League baseball hero (played by James Earl Jones) who, because of his own bitterness, prevents his son from accepting a college football scholarship. Mr. Murphy thought the role of the son would be an opportunity to tackle serious material for a change, and Paramount Pictures bought the rights for him for more than $1 million, at that time one of the highest sums ever paid for a theatrical property.

Prior commitments kept the project dormant until early 1989, when the Paramount vice president in charge of the production, Kevin Jones, submitted it to Barry Levinson. Mr. Levinson was known as a director sensitive to performance and family dynamics. More important, he was coming off critical and commercial success with “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Rain Man,” which had won the Academy Award for best picture.