HBO's upcoming film Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight will be released on Oct. 5, announced on Thursday.

Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liasions, The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things) directed the movie with the script written by Shawn Slovo (A World Apart).

Greatest Fight is based on Muhammad Ali's legal battle defending his claim to conscientious objector status. Ali used the status to avoid being drafted to the Vietnam War during the height of his boxing career. Authorities arrested him for refusing to be conscripted into the military, he was found guilty on draft evasion charges and stripped of his boxing title. The case was then taken to the highest court of the U.S. judicial system and the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971. While the happenings in the courtroom have been well documented, the film mostly takes viewers behind the scenes.

Nobody will be portraying the now 71-year-old boxer and instead the film will use archival footage of him.

The film stars Christopher Plummer (as Justice John Harlan), Frank Langella (Justice Warren Burger), Benjamin Walker (Kevin Connolly), Ed Begley, Jr. (Justice Harry Blackmun), Peter Gerety (Justice William Brennan), Barry Levinson (Justice Potter Stewart), John Bedford Lloyd (Justice Byron White), Fritz Weaver (Justice Hugo Black), Harris Yulin (Justice William O. Douglas), Pablo Schreiber (Covert Becker), Ben Steinfeld (Sam Edelstein), Dana Ivey (Mrs. Paige), Kathleen Chalfont (Ethel Harlan), Lisa Joyce (Donna Connolly) and Danny Glover (Justice Thurgood Marshall).

The filmmakers faced some criticism about the movie's all-white cast earlier in 2013 but Slovo defended the decision in July. 

"We were making a Supreme Court drama," he explained. "There were no black clerks and woman clerks. That's the drama we were telling. We chose to make a Supreme Court drama about the Ali case."

Watch 10 of Ali's most memorable fights:

1. Ali vs. Joe Frazier (1971)

2. Ali vs. Ken Norton II (1973)

3. Ali vs. Trevor Berbick (1981)

4. Ali vs. George Foreman (1974)

5. Ali vs. Karl Mildenberger (1966):

6. Ali vs. Rocky Marciano

7. Ali vs. Joe Frazier III (Thrille in Manila in 1975)

8. Ali vs. Larry Holmes (1980)

9. Ali vs. Leon Spinks I (1978)

10. Ali vs. Earnie Shavers (1977)

Watch the trailer of the film here:

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