Black Owned Wall Street

Morgan Freeman’s Long Quest to Bring the 761st Tank Battalion to the Big Screen
Morgan Freeman has spent decades trying to tell the story of the 761st Tank Battalion, the pioneering all-Black armored unit that fought in World War II. The project was first announced as an untitled DreamWorks feature film, with Freeman teaming up with “Remember the Titans” screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard to bring the story to life as a dramatic narrative.
That scripted film never made it to production. But Freeman never gave up on the story. In 2023, he finally got a version of it in front of audiences — not as a Hollywood blockbuster, but as a two-hour documentary called 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers, which aired on the History Channel. Freeman served as executive producer and host, and the project took on a personal dimension when he discovered that his own uncle had served in the battalion.
Even after the documentary, Freeman made clear he wasn’t done. He has spoken about wanting to create a sweeping dramatic series in the vein of Band of Brothers, saying the story deserves to be seen “in all of its depth and wonder, bravery and guts.”
So more than two decades after that original DreamWorks announcement, the big dramatic film Freeman first envisioned still hasn’t been made — but his commitment to honoring the 761st clearly hasn’t faded either.