Alan Arkin & Kim Basinger Get Into A 'Grudge Match' With Sylvester Stallone & Robert De Niro

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by Joe Cunningham
November 9, 2012 2:17 PM
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It’s one of those movies that sounds like it’s been thought up on a boozy night out -- wouldn’t it be great if there was a movie where Rocky and Jake LaMotta fight each other in the ring? Well, now there will be! Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro are stepping back into the ring as a pair of retired fighters who wish to settle an old score in “Grudge Match,” and now the movie is beginning to round out the rest of its cast.

Alan Arkin (hot off a well-received turn in “Argo”) is in talks to appear as Harry ‘Razor’ Sharp’s (Stallone) former trainer, ‘Lighting’ Louis Epstein, who is rescued from a nursing home by the fighter who has taken the fight to pay his medical bills. Meanwhile, Kim Basinger will also join the cast as an old flame of Razor’s who questions his decision to return to the ring. This all suggests to us that the script (penned by Tim Kelleher and recently rewritten by “Entourage” scribe Doug Ellin) will focus more on Stallone’s character than on De Niro’s Billy ‘The Kid’ McGuigan.

There’s always the chance that this film will ape last year’s “Warrior” and place equal emphasis on both characters, asking us to root for them both – but we’ll have to see whether the next casting additions are centered around De Niro’s character instead. Kevin Hart is also on board as the fight promoter in Peter Segal’s (“Get Smart”) movie, which we’re sure is a classic in the making. [Var iety]