Ever since The Fighter, it’s seemed Mark Wahlberg and David O’Russell have wanted to work together again, but have failed miserably. They were going to make Uncharted together, but then both left, then they were going to make The Silver Linings Playbook, but Wahlberg decided to make the better paying Broken City instead. Now Mark has signed up for 2 Guns, just as O’Russell has left.
Apparently the problem is scheduling again, as while Universal won’t start shooting until Wahlberg has completed Broken City, but at that point, O’Russell will still be hard at work on Silver Linings Playbook.
THR says the current plan is to ditch the script rewrite O’Russell has done, and go back to a previous one by Blake Masters, based on a comic written by Steven Grant with art by Mat Santolouco. The story follows a DEA agent and an undercover naval intelligence office that have been ordered to investigate each other, without either realising the other is part of the law enforment community. They soon find out that they have been double-crossed by the mob, whom they believed they were both stealing money from. It isn’t clear which undercover cop Wahlberg has come on board to play.
The movie was originally being eyed at one point as an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn vehicle, but Wilson left quite a while ago, and now Vaughn has departed at the same time as O’Russell.