Mark Wahlberg Reveals Failed Pitch for The Departed Sequel

Uncharted hit theaters last week and sees Spider-Man star Tom Holland playing Nathan Drake while Mark Wahlberg plays Victor “Sully” Sullivan. In honor of the movie’s release, the two stars have been giving interviews and sharing some interesting stories about pitches that didn’t go so well for them in the past. Holland recently shared that his idea of a James Bond origin movie was rejected, and Wahlberg recently told Entertainment Weekly that his idea for a sequel to Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was also rejected. 

“Let’s just say the pitch didn’t go very well,” Wahlberg shared. “He didn’t really have anything fleshed out, but he’s the kind of guy you just trust to go and write something,” he added of screenwriter William “Bill” Monahan. “And so when we were working on the script for Cocaine Cowboys and American Desperado, [I] said, ‘Bill, just go write.’ They like to have things well thought out and planned.”

It’s no surprise Wahlberg is the actor from The Departed who tried to continue the story considering his character, Sergeant Dignam, was one of the few to make it out of the movie alive. He was also the only actor from the cast to receive an Oscar nomination. The movie ended up winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing. According to the interview with EW, Wahlberg wanted to bring in Robert De Niro and Brad Pitt for the follow-up. “It’d be a pretty good one,” he teased.

As for Holland’s James Bond pitch, the young actor recently appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers and revealed why his idea didn’t work. 

“It didn’t work out quite as planned. Essentially, I’m such a big fan of James Bond. I’ve loved Daniel Craig’s movies. And I just thought: If they were to move on it would be really exciting to see how James Bond becomes James Bond. So, I pitched this idea for a movie, which is kind of a stupid idea. Essentially you wouldn’t tell the audience that it was a James Bond movie until the end, but from a marketing point of view, that’s a nightmare. Like that just doesn’t make any sense,” Holland explained. 

Uncharted is now in theaters. Readers can check out all of our previous coverage of the film right here.