Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee is making the rounds promoting his latest project “Highest 2 Lowest” starring Denzel Washington, a neo-noir crime thriller which debuted in theatres this weekend.

However, there is “A Spike Lee Joint” that’s yet to grace the big screen that the American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author wants to make, and that’s realizing the screenplay “Save Us, Joe Louis” into a movie.

The Academy Award-winning Lee recently doubled down, stating that one of his major priorities is to develop the years-long project around the iconic heavyweight champion. Lee co-wrote “Save Us, Joe Louis” with Budd Schulberg, a celebrated author and member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame who wrote about boxing until he died in 2009 at 95.

“I promised Budd on his deathbed that I would get this made,” Lee told the Los Angeles Times.

Lee has previously labeled the script as “epic,” and he expanded on the project during a 2023 interview with The New Yorker.

“I have a wealth and a plethora of ideas. It's just the money – you got to finance that stuff,” said Lee. “My dream project is a film called ‘Save Us Joe Louis’ which I co-wrote with the great Budd Schulberg.

“Budd Schulberg won an Oscar for ‘On the Waterfront’ … Budd was at the two Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fights in Yankee Stadium. This screenplay is about the relationship between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, who was not a Nazi, but was under the tyranny of Hitler.

“For two years, Budd would call me every day. He was on his deathbed, he would call me, and what kept him alive was the idea that we're going to make this film together. And he was like, ‘Spike, did you get the money yet?’ … ‘I'm working on it, Budd, I'm working on it’ … I made a promise to Budd on his deathbed, and we're going to get this film made one day.”

The project has been around since the turn of the century.

In 2000, The Guardian reported that Lee acquired the rights to Louis' life story from The Brown Bomber’s son, Joe Louis Barrow Jr, around the time that he had started developing the script with Schulberg and fellow Hall of Famer Bert Sugar.

By 2014, the exclusive global, theatrical, and movie rights for Louis were acquired by producers Fran Kirmser and Tony Ponturo.

Lee said at the time: "The hook is the relationship – as adversaries, as political tools, as opponents in the ring, and as friends – between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, and the arc of their lives. They engaged in perhaps the greatest two moments of sports and warfare of the entire 20th century, symbolically speaking.”

Lee has been a storyteller of the sweet science and a fixture at major boxing events throughout the decades.

Schulberg was a revered boxing writer and historian as well as Sports Illustrated's first boxing editor. He was also the author of such books as “Loser and Still Champion: Muhammad Ali” (1972), “Sparring With Hemingway: And Other Legends of the Fight Game” (1995), and “Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage” (2006).