LOS ANGELES — It took a while — more than 40 years, actually.

But Albert S. Ruddy, a movie and television producer who does not like to quit, has landed rights to make his passion project: a screen version of “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s Objectivist bible.

Mr. Ruddy, whose canon includes films as varied as “The Godfather” and “The Cannonball Run,” almost had a deal back in the early 1970s, when he wooed Ms. Rand personally while sitting on a small couch in New York.

But Ms. Rand, who had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s and feared the Russians might acquire Paramount Pictures to subvert the project, wanted script approval; Mr. Ruddy, as adamant as she was, declined. “Then I’ll put in my will, the one person who can’t get it is you,” Mr. Ruddy recalls being told by Ms. Rand, who died in 1982.

Eventually, the rights were acquired by John Aglialoro, an investor and devotee of Ms. Rand’s philosophy, which celebrates capitalism and rational self-interest. Mr. Aglialoro became a producer of three independent films based on the nearly 1,200-page novel, beginning with “Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” released in 2011.