Funny thing about being a movie star–one year, you can earn nothing but complete critical and commercial success for your work, and then another...well, you don’t. Perhaps not an actor working today has ridden the ladder of ascension and descent quite as drastically as Mark Wahlberg; 2006 saw such well-regarded turns in Invincible and The Departed, the latter of which he managed to snag a Best Supporting Actor nod out of. Of course, as we all know, Wahlberg followed up his newfound success with such cinematic delights as Max Payne, The Lovely Bones, Shooter, and the grandturkey of them all, The Happening (a project he himself came to bash).
Thankfully for Wahlberg, 2010 is looking a bit more like 2006 than 2007, 2008, or 2009– aside from turning in nice comedy work in hits such as Date Night and The Other Guys, Wahlberg’s also been stirring up a bit of Oscar talk for his turn in David O. Russell’s upcoming The Fighter. And now, just to keep things interesting, it looks as if Wahlberg is eyeing a return to the land of action: in an interview with MTV, Wahlberg re-expressed his interest in the Allen Hughes-helmed Broken City. Hit the jump for more of Wahlberg’s quotes, as well as some of my brief thoughts.
"There's this other thing, 'Broken City,' that I want to do... at the end of next year with Allen Hughes directing. It's on the Black List. It's one of the best unproduced screenplays... It's an amazing piece of material that should attract amazing talents. Hopefully we'll get that thing together."
The script, penned by Brian Tucker, would entail Wahlberg’s Billy Taggart, an ex-cop and low-rent private investigator, being hired by a shady mayoral candidate to investigate his wife’s infidelity. As is the case with any good noir, sex, corruption and secrets ensue.
Consider me psyched. Hughes, along with his brother Albert, is the man behind both 2001’s From Hell and earlier this year’s The Book of Eli, two of the more interesting and (I would argue) rather under-appreciated genre gems of the past few years. To see as star as charismatic and likable as Wahlberg team with such a visually energetic and unique vizualist sounds...well, tantalizing, to say the least.
And come on–you have to admit this sounds a bit more interesting than that other action-fest Wahlberg just signed on to...