The Fighter is the perfect award season movie. It’s based on a true story, it showcases some great acting, and it’s uplifting. It’s the type of movie that allows you to leave the theater happy and proud. How many times does that happen?

Director David O. Russell managed to bring a magnificent cast to this story about a working class boxer who is making one last push for a title. Mark Wahlberg plays Mickey Ward, a welterweight whose career  has been horribly mismanaged by his overbearing mother Alice (played by Melissa Leo).

In fact, his entire boxing career has been a family affair. His seven sisters frequently offer up unwanted opinions.  What a treat they are, swilling beer in their acid washed jeans and sporting amazing bang claws on the top of the heads. They steadfastly stand behind anything their mother says.

His half-brother Dickey is Mickey’s trainer, whenever he is not passed out in a crack flophouse. Dickey just floats about, showing up whenever it is convenient. Poor Dad is too beaten down by Alice to speak up.

The family completely enables Dickey.  Everyone knows what is going on with him, but no one dares to acknowledge it. After all, he’s the apple of their eye, because long ago, when Dicky was boxing, he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard.  Dickey has been the pride of Lowell ever since.  There is a documentary crew from HBO following Dicky around. He thinks it is for his comeback.  It’s really to show the chronic effects of crack use.

It may look a bit like Oscar fodder, but the very first trailer for The Fighter starring Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg has hit the web, and it looks like it could be the next Rocky. At least, that seems to be what it’s going for.

The film comes from David O. Russell, the man who brought us I Heart Huckabees and Three Kings starring George Clooney and Ice Cube. It follows the story of boxer “Irish” Micky Ward as he broke into the sport in the mid 1980s.

The movie pits Bale and Wahlberg together as contentious brothers, who’s tension will drive the film and that looks to be a major appeal from the trailer. Also joining in is Oscar nominee Amy Adams, who plays Wahlberg’s love interest.

This script has been on the shelf for quite some time, with nearly half a dozen rewrites and changed studio hands countless times more. It looks like it’s finally found a home at Paramount and will hit theaters on December 10th.

Check out the first full trailer after the jump.