De Niro, Pacino to reunite on-screen for upcoming thriller
Veteran Hollywood tough guys Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are set to team up for only the second time ever for a new detective thriller, producers revealed at the Cannes Film Festival.
The deal was sealed late Thursday, with just a few details revealed to the media.
The movie, to be called Righteous Kill, will see the two stars portray police detectives on the hunt for a serial killer. The screenplay is by Russell Gerwirtz, who penned last year’s tense Denzel Washington-Clive Owen bank heist thriller Inside Man.
Unlike the two actors’ previous match-up, Righteous Kill will feature De Niro and Pacino “on screen together for virtually the whole film,” Avi Lerner, head of the movie’s Los Angeles-based production company Millennium Films, told the Hollywood Reporter.
The two Oscar-winning actors starred as epic rivals on different sides of the law in Michael Mann’s well-regarded 1995 crime thriller Heat. However, they appeared together in just a few scenes.
De Niro and Pacino also both starred in The Godfather Part II, but did not share any scenes.
According to Randall Emmett, one of Righteous Kill’s six producers, the idea for the film originated from De Niro and Pacino’s desire to be co-stars again.
“They’re friends and this really all got started from that,” Emmett said at a short press briefing in Cannes.
Rumoured to have a budget of $60 million US, Righteous Kill is expected to begin filming in Connecticut and New York in August.
Pacino will also be honoured by the American Film Institute next month, with the group set to present him with its 35th Life Achievement Award on June 7.
Past recipients include De Niro, who won the award in 2003, Meryl Streep, Frank Capra, George Lucas, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Taylor.
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