mark wahlberg (16 posts)

Twentieth Century Fox

John McCain and Barack Obama should be happy they're not running against a video-game hero.

As expected, Max Payne, the Mark Wahlberg, action/gamer movie, easily won the weekend box office, and, as expected, defeated Oliver Stone's hot-button W., which bowed in fourth place, but met expectations with a $10.6 million debut.

For Payne, the question wasn't whether it would unseat incumbent Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but how high it would go.

Keep Reading

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com

Shh! Don't tell fans of his latest tough-guy shoot-'em-up Max Payne, but Mark Wahlberg is just a big old softie. The father of three has finally set the date for his wedding to Rhea Durham, the mother of his children.

"We're talking about getting married in August," Wahlberg revealed at a press conference for Max Payne Sunday.

You must have a good reason for picking August, right, Marky? "It's a good month." OK!

So Hollywood, pencil that in—but don't check your mailboxes for that save the date notice. Adds Wahlberg: "We're not inviting yet."

AP Photo/Denis Poroy

Mark Wahlberg got a rowdy, boy-band reception at San Diego Comic-Con, where he showed up to promote video-game adaptation Max Payne. A surprisingly female crowd—this is a comic book convention, after all—went nuts as he took the stage to talk about his brutal revenge thriller.

"This is like playing a show in Japan," Wahlberg told the screaming crowd. "Now I know why the New Kids went back!"

The former face of the Funky Bunch was joined by costars Mila Kunis and Ludacris, and he had nice words for his fellow rapper-turned-actor. "I come from the music world, so I'm always a little suspicious about how much they're going to commit," Wahlberg said. "Chris is good, though—the next big shining bright star."

The three spoke after rolling sneak-peek footage from Max Payne, scheduled to open in October. Here's what the crowd saw:

Keep Reading

AP Photo/Denis Poroy

We're there on the ground getting you all the Comic-Con intel you need to know—and plenty of photos in our Comic-Con gallery. Here are the highlights from day one:

Keanu Comes in Peace (Except for the Killer Nanobots): Keanu Reeves took to the Comic-Con stage to introduce a preview of The Day the Earth Stood Still, a remake of the classic Robert Wise sci-fi tale about a messianic alien named Klaatu who says he's looking for peace but is met with war (and, in the new one, Jennifer Connelly).

Keep Reading

The CW

OMFG. Consider the Gossip Girl word sufficiently spread.

The CW hit received a leading—and whopping—14 nominations this morning for the Teen Choice 2008 Awards.

Chris Brown checked in with nine nods, Miley Cyrus (who will host the ceremony) scored four nods, and perpetual nominee Justin Timberlake racked up three.

Timberlake is the awards' winningest artist, having aggregated 21 surfboards—the event's laid-back hardware of choice—since 1999.

Keep Reading

Mark Wahlberg has just saved The Lovely Bones from an early grave.

Wahlberg gave the ballyhooed project a last-minute reprieve, agreeing to join the cast of Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Alice Sebold bestseller after Ryan Gosling dropped out a day before cameras were due to roll.

Gosling, who packed on 20 pounds and grew a beard for the Bones part, bailed on Friday, citing "creative differences."

That sent filmmakers scrambling to find a leading man with an open calendar to keep the Oscar-bait production on track. The call went out to Wahlberg, who, according to Variety, read the script and agreed to fill in, enabling Jackson to avoid any serious disruptions to his first film since 2005's blockbuster King Kong remake.

Gosling, who scored an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 2006 indie drama Half-Nelson and has earned stellar reviews for his new blowup-doll love story, Lars and the Real Girl, had been set to star opposite Rachel Weisz as grieving parents whose lives unravel after their young daughter is brutally raped and murdered.

Wahlberg, himself an Academy Award nominee for last year's Best Picture winner, The Departed, agreed on Sunday to take over the patriarchal part, per the trade.

With Wahlberg on board, shooting began Monday in Philadelphia before moving on to the filmmaker's native New Zealand.

Jackson snapped up the rights to the ghostly story after the novel was published in 2002. He and coproducer Fran Walsh adapted the book with longtime collaborator Philippa Boyens.

While changing a leading man on the eve of a shoot is certainly nerve-wracking, Jackson has been in this spot before, having replaced Stuart Townsend with Viggo Mortensen just days before production kicked off on Lord of the Rings.

Wahlberg, currently oncreen opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Robert Duvall in the crime thriller We Own the Night, is familiar with the City of Brotherly Love, having starred as a former Philadelphia Eagle in Invincible and recently wrapping M. Night Shyamalan's latest, The Happening.

While Bones marks Wahlberg's first starring role for Jackson, it's not their first collaboration. The Kiwi director made a brief cameo in last season's Entourage, the HBO comedy series executive-produced by Wahlberg.

After The Lovely Bones, Wahlberg will get in the ring with Brad Pitt for Darren Aronofsky's The Fighter and then segue into The Brazilian Job, a sequel to 2003's The Italian Job.

Brad Pitt is taking his fight out of the club and into the arena, by way of the jail cell.

Paramount Pictures confirmed to E! News Thursday that the 43-year-old Hollywood heavyweight is in talks to play a disgraced boxer who turns his life around in time to mentor his half-brother in his quest for a light welterweight world title in the true-life drama The Fighter.

Mark Wahlberg is set to play hometown hero "Irish" Micky Ward, while Pitt would play Dickie Ecklund, Ward's older sibling and a promising fighter who once gave Sugar Ray Leonard a run for his title money but instead ended up in prison.

Ecklund's story was also featured in the 1995 HBO documentary High on Crack Street, and the Dropkick Murphys tune "The Warrior's Code" is dedicated to Ward, whose picture appears on the cover of the Boston-bred Celtic punk band's self-titled album.

Although Ward, who hails from Lowell, Massachusetts, never won a world title from his sport's top four organizations, he was a scrappy fan favorite who earned both a World Boxing Union Intercontinental Light Welterweight title and the WBU Light Welterweight title on his way to a 38-13 lifetime win-loss record. Three of his fights were dubbed Fight of the Year by Ring magazine.

Darren Aronofsky, of the twisted visions in Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, will direct the biopic, while 8 Mile scribe Scott Silver is working on the latest draft of the screenplay.

Before buffing up for his turn in The Fighter, Wahlberg stars in M. Night Shyamalan's next chiller The Happening, which is slated for a June release. The actor's latest film, We Own the Night, opens Oct. 12.

Pitt, who recently signed on to reteam with Fight Club doppelgänger Edward Norton in the political thriller State of Play, is headed for wide release on Friday in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Pitt plays the infamous outlaw, and Casey Affleck is the resentful follower who shoots him in the back.

The role won Pitt the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.