HBO Asia remembers Muhammad Ali with the HBO Original movie, “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight”, now on Astro On The Go.
Famous for both his signature shuffle and verbal sparring, boxer Cassius Clay quickly rose to fame in the 60s, becoming the world’s best-known athlete – and eventually its most controversial.
After joining the Nation of Islam and adopting the name Muhammad Ali, he was widely denounced for refusing to be drafted into the US military, based on his religious opposition to the Vietnam War.
Stripped of his title and banned from the sport, the self-proclaimed “Greatest” lost nearly 4 years of his boxing prime to legal battles. In 1971, his case for being a conscientious objector eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, rooted by tradition and conservative ideals with Nixon appointed Chief Justice Warren E. Burger at its helm.
Going behind the closed doors of the United States Supreme Court as the nine Justices decide the outcome of Muhammad Ali’s landmark 1971 case for being a conscientious objector. Justice Harlan, a respected jurist with 15 years on the Court, finds himself at odds with the status quo after his perspective is challenged by the contemporary ideals of his new clerk.
“Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” stars Academy Award winner Christopher Plummer (“Beginners”), Academy Award nominee Frank Langella (“Frost/Nixon”) and Benjamin Walker (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”); directed by Academy Award nominee Stephen Frears (“The Queen”) from a script by Shawn Slovo (“A World Apart”); and executive produced by Emmy winner Frank Doelger (HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and “The Gathering Storm”), Emmy winner Tracey Scoffield (HBO’s “The Gathering Storm”), Jonathan Cameron and Stephen Frears.
Watch the trailer below:
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.,was hospitalised in Scottsdale on 2nd June 2016, with a respiratory illness. Though his condition was initially described as “fair”, it worsened and he passed the following day, aged 74, from septic shock.
Ali was mourned globally, and a family spokesman said the family “certainly believes that Muhammad was a citizen of the world … and they know that the world grieves with him.”
