Mark Wahlberg Updates Six Million Dollar Man Reboot
Mark Wahlberg says The Six Billion Dollar Man movie is still happening.
After decades of development limbo, they have the technology to rebuild The Six Million Dollar Man. Based on the 1970s sci-fi TV show starring Lee Majors as Col. Steve Austin — an ace pilot turned into a bionic-powered secret agent who becomes part man, part machine after a near-fatal accident — the Six Million Dollar Man reboot has been taken apart and put back together since the 1990s. Mark Wahlberg has been attached to The Six Billion Dollar Man since 2014, when the project was in the works at the now-defunct Weinstein Co. before being picked up at Warner Bros.
"We've got the rights again, we're looking at making that movie — hopefully soon," Wahlberg told ScreenRant. The 52-year-old actor noted there's a "ticking clock" on playing an action hero, adding: "Thank God it's an older guy who they feel like has some real-life experience that makes it worth it for him to be the subject of this experiment."
"We can rebuild him. We have the technology" is the iconic phrase that saw OSI Director Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) transform Austin into a "better, stronger, faster" bionic man in the original television series that aired 99 episodes between 1973-1978 and six TV movies.
"We're talking about doing Six Billion Dollar Man, which is very much a superhero, but I don't have to wear any kind of spandex cape. So that would be cool," Wahlberg said in a 2014 interview. Howard Gordon of 24 and Homeland fame was hired to write the script, taking over from Damian Szifron. Once dated for May 2019 and then June 2020, The Six Billion Dollar Man never got off the ground.
"People are talking about doing it," Walhberg said at the time, "but we got a great, great idea and it's something that's been in the pipeline for quite some time, so hopefully if we get the script right maybe we'll make it after we do Deep Water Horizon."
Bill Dubuque (The Accountant) penned the latest script.
Wahlberg next appears in the true story-based Arthur the King, about pro adventure racer Michael Light's (Wahlberg) 10-day, 435-mile trek with scrappy street dog Arthur and a team of athletes (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Ali Suliman) during the Adventure Racing World Championship in the Dominican Republic. Arthur the King is in theaters March 15.