Denzel Washington is excited. Not so much because he is an Oscar front-runner for his role in Fences but because bringing the award-winning stage play about blue collar African-Americans to the big screen has been a long-held dream.

“It’s brilliant. It’s like, why would they make Hamlet a movie? Why would they make Death of a Salesman a movie? Because it is some of the greatest writing in the 20th century,” the actor said.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning Fences, which opens in US movie theatres tomorrow, is the first play by the late,  influential black playwright August Wilson to be turned into a film.

With strong reviews, Fences has put Washington and Davis front and centre of a Hollywood awards season

Washington and Viola Davis reprise their 2010 Tony- winning roles as egotistical garbage worker Troy Maxson and his long-suffering wife Rose in the intense family drama about lost hope, betrayal and race prejudice in 1950s America.

“There’s an excitement because we knew that this is permanent now. This is forever. So everybody’s coming with their game,” Washington said.

With strong reviews, Fences has put Washington and Davis front and centre of a Hollywood awards season looking to redeem itself after the #OscarsSoWhite furore of the past two years.

Washington, 61, is seen as a leading contender for his third Oscar, while Davis, 51, is regarded by awards pundits as a shoo-in in the supporting actress race.

Wilson, who died in 2005, set many of his plays in the pre-civil rights era, charting the experience of African-American working men and women and their struggle for dignity and love.