A few weeks ago rumours emerged that Mark Wahlberg had been offiered the lead role in the remake of The Crow, and was seriously considering it. However while it turns out the rumours we true, the actor has told Cinematical that’s he’s not going to make the movie. Here’s what he said: “We never committed to making the movie. They talked to me about it, and there was a director attached who I was a fan of, and he’s no longer doing it. We just thought about it – ‘is there something cool to be done there?’ But we’re not committed to making the movie.”
Interestingly, the director that Wahlberg mentions is presulably Stephen Norrington (Blade), who was attached to The Crow remake for a long time, but recently dropped out. Intriguingly Norrington said that the reason he left was because an actor became involved with the project, who in true Hollywood fashion initially said he loved Norrington’s vision and wanted to work with him, before completely rejecting the screenplay the director had worked on with Nick Cave, and demanding a page one rewrite from a completely new writer. The presumption then has to be that this was Wahlberg, and that despite the fact he’s not taking the role, his meddling now means the remake is also without a director (although it should be stressed this is informed speculation rather than definite fact).
Wahlberg’s next projects include the crime drama Contraband and he is in talks to star in Seth MacFarlane’s directorial debut, Ted, which the actor did confirm. Here’s what he had to say about both Contraband and Ted: “It’s very, very cool, kind of like a heist thriller – very smart, very original, aside from the fact that it’s a remake. And nobody saw it, so it will be something different for American audiences. Then [I’m] doing another comedy with Seth MacFarlane – his directorial debut. I’m just off-the-charts excited about that.”
Ted centers on a grown man whose prized possession – his childhood teddy bear – is alive and more than a hanful Contraband tells the tale of a former smuggler who reforms and takes an honest job as a security guard. He gets forced back into this criminal underworld to save his brother, who botched a smuggling run.