Sharing the screen together for the first time since 1978’s The Deer Hunter, Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro will reunite for the upcoming comedy The War With Grandpa. Deadline is reporting that Walken and De Niro will again play best friends, and that comedic journeyman Eugene Levy has also been cast in an unspecified role.
Based on Robert Kimmel Smith’s book, The War With Grandpa will see a boy’s affection for his grandfather give in to a deep, seething resentment as his bedroom is annexed to accommodate the elder’s open-ended stay. That conflict then escalates into a familial arms race, with the grandson staging a series of pranks intended to hasten his grandfather’s departure. High jinks ensue when the grandson discovers that De Niro also knows how to dish it out (perhaps borrowing a trick or two from fellow elderly pranksters Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland).
The War With Grandpa will be helmed by Hop director Tim Hill. While Walken is relatively new to the comedy scene, De Niro is practically a one-man cottage industry of the genre. The War With Grandpa will fire its opening shot April 21.