Ever since April, when Mark Wahlberg hinted that he would be teaming up with teen heartthrob Justin Bieber for a movie that would take place, "in the gritty world of street basketball," speculation had been whether this thing would ever come to fruition. Well, depending on where you sit with Bieber-mania, you're either going to be very happy or your day just got a tad bit worse.
Wahlberg recently spoke with MTV about the proposed film, which is still in development and reiterated that the film would carry a serious tone. He went on to compare the movie to a Martin Scorsese classic – the 1986 Paul Newman, Tom Cruise billiard hustling flick, The Color of Money.
He goes on to explain, "So I get this call from Paramount [with a story about] an old guy and a young guy. I'm like, 'Cool, let's get Jack Nicholson. Let's get Robert DeNiro. Let's get Robert Duvall.' And they go, 'What about Garrett Hedlund?' I'm like, 'For what?' They're like, 'For the young guy.'"
Wahlberg says that once he was on board to play the old guy, it was his idea to get Bieber, which Paramount approved. Paramount also put out this year's Bieber documentary Never Say Never which raked in almost $100 million worldwide. Wahlberg called it intuition to go after Bieber, we all know it's only common sense. Bieber's name on the billing essentially guarantees Paramount makes back a good chunk of the money they sink into this project.
"I see the guy and I spent time with him and you see what he does and how he does it and then you actually have a conversation with him, and it's there. It's there and if it's not, I will extract it."
The script is still being written and there is no director attached so Wahlberg can work on extracting whatever "it" is from Bieber. In the meantime, Wahlberg will star opposite Kate Beckinsale and Giovanni Ribisi in Contraband which opens January 13th.
