Screen legend Robert De Niro won’t play the nice grandpa as evidence by the raunchy comedy Dirty Grandpa released earlier this year. The two-time Oscar winner is now is talks to headline Dimension Films’ The War with Grandpa, an adaptation of the novel by Robert Kimmel Smith. Tim Hill, director of Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) and Garfield 2 (2006) will direct as scribes Matt Ember and Tom Astle (of the DreamWorks animated hit Home) do a re-write of the screenplay.

The younger-skewering comedy centers around a young lad and the barrage of pranks he engages with his grandfather after the old man is put up in his room. Neither side will go down with a fight. No other casting announcements have yet to made but cameras are expected to start rolling soon.

If De Niro does indeed sign on, he would film this before heading onto an eagerly anticipated reunion with director Martin Scorsese with The Irishman. That film, which Paramount will distribute domestically and STX Entertainment will take overseas, will be an all-star Scorsese showdown not just starring De Niro, but also Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci. Aside from Dirty Grandpa, De Niro portrayed Jennifer Lawrence’s father in David O. Russell’s drama Joy last winter and starred alongside Anne Hathaway in last fall’s sleeper The Intern.

Soon the actor will appear in the boxing drama Hands of Stone and recently completed filming Taylor Hackford’s The Comedian.