The “got-to-be-done movie” Morgan Freeman has been trying to make since 1985: “It’s really hard”
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Thu 2 October 2025 16:15, UK
While some actors or filmmakers can get their passion projects off the ground in a matter of months, it often takes years for them to become a reality. For Morgan Freeman, he’s been patiently biding his time since the mid-1980s, and he’s yet to see the fruits of his labour.
He won’t give up, though, and he’s actually closer than ever, which is just as well, since the Academy Award-winning icon has spent two-thirds of his 60-year career trying to make it happen. There’s perseverance, and then there’s whatever Freeman has been doing, and his refusal to give up is nothing if not admirable.
When it does eventually make its way to the big screen, which is closer than ever to capping off what’s become his life’s work, the Shawshank Redemption star may only be involved ceremonially. Sure, there’s always a chance he could play a role in the long-awaited live-action adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, but not to put too morbid a point on it, he’s getting on a bit.
Freeman purchased the rights to the novel a long time ago, and since then, he’s suffered numerous false starts. “That’s a got-to-be-done movie,” he told MTV in 2010. “Just have to figure out how to do it. I’ve been trying for, I don’t know, 15 years now to get a script. You would think it was easier than it is. It’s not; it’s really hard.”
At the time, David Fincher had recently dropped out of the director’s chair, having been attached since 2003. Freeman admitted the source material was “a hard nut to crack, but once it’s cracked, it could become something.” Refusing to be dissuaded from his dream, he continued to tout Rendezvous with Rama as the dream project to end all dream projects.
In addition to shepherding the film as a producer, Freeman revealed that he also wanted to play the role of Commander Norton, because his “fantasy of commanding a starship is commanding Endeavour,” the spacecraft sent to intercept and study Rama, the hulking cylindrical ship at the centre of the story.
Of course, it was announced in December 2021 that Denis Villeneuve would be helming Rendezvous with Rama, with Freeman and his producing partner, Lori McCreary, backing the picture through their Revelations Entertainment banner because they used to own the rights to the book, but realistically, when will it begin shooting?
Villeneuve has the third instalment in the Dune saga set for release in December 2026, and then he’ll start working on his James Bond movie. That won’t arrive in cinemas until 2028 at the earliest, possibly even 2029. When the filmmaker signed on to adapt Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, it was pegged as his first post-Dune feature until 007 got in the way. If that remains the case, it could be a decade before Rendezvous with Rama lands to put the exclamation point on Freeman’s long-held wish.
Even though he remains a prolific presence onscreen, Freeman turns 90 years old in June 2027, when Villeneuve will be knee-deep in Bond. He’s been trying to get it made since 1985, and having made it this far, he’ll no doubt move heaven and earth to ensure he’s there when it reaches the screen.
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