The Fighter is making its way to screen and as you would imagine, good sir Mark Wahlberg is chatting folks up about the film and his other upcoming projects. While talking to MTV News, he elaborated a bit on one such project- another lost Black List script that’s attached to director Allen Hughes, of the familiar Hughes Brothers duo (Menace II Society, From Hell, Book of Eli). According to Wahlberg, he and Hughes are looking at a start date sometime towards the end of 2011, and that he hopes it will act like a bug-zapper, attracting other high-profile people (except maybe without that icky death part). The story concerns a private detective haunted by his accidental shooting of a teenager eight years earlier while still a cop. The plot gets started when he is hired by a mayoral candidate to, in true noir style, investigate whether or not the politician’s wife is sleeping around.
“There’s this other thing —Broken City— that I want to do at the end of next year with Allen Hughes directing, which is on the Black List. It’s one of the best unproduced screenplays… Again, an amazing piece of material that should attract amazing talents. Hopefully we’ll get that thing together. Hopefully Fighter will make it a little bit easier to some of these projects off the ground.”
Listen at him try and steer the conversation back to the movie at hand. So quaint. MTV pressed about the genre of the script to which Wahlberg said, “uhh …crime …mystery… it’s kind of in the vein of those old classics- Chinatown, even L.A. Confidential, something like that.”
Walhberg is as much a move and shaker behind the camera as he is in front of it, producing a number of hit shows (including Boardwalk Empire!) and some films, so I’m sure if he’s really behind the film he can go along way towards getting it started. If all of the hubbub about his performance in The Fighter is legit, then maybe his wish for its momentum to help these projects out will come true. We’ll have to check back in with him, post-awards season and see…