Although there was a time when it was easy to keep track of which A-listers in Hollywood were lending their talents to superhero movies, nowadays it’s arguably easier to just go over the big-name actors who haven’t contributed to the genre yet. In Mark Wahlberg’s case, while he was part of Scoob!’s voice cast as Blue Falcon, he still hasn’t made his live-action superhero debut yet. That’s because he’s been wanting The Six Billion Dollar Man to fill that void, so where are we at with getting this movie?
CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell discussed the long-in-development adaptation of the Lee Majors-led TV series The Six Million Dollar Man while speaking with Mark Wahlberg about his new movie Uncharted. The actor said he’s been trying to get The Six Billion Dollar Man made for “quite some time,” calling it a “great balance of all this kind of wish fulfillment and these abilities to do amazing things,” yet still being “very grounded and real,” not to mention him being able to do the movie with “normal clothes on” rather than wear spandex or a cape. As for what the movie’s current status is, here’s what Wahlberg said:
Well, I mean, right now, it’s not happening, but we’re eager to get it made if we can. I mean, we were kind of close, I would say, within the last year. And then the studio was like ‘Oh, we’re going to press pause for now.’ So we’ll see. I mean, I would never close that door completely. I still have Lee Majors calling me, asking me what’s going on and what’s happening, and I wish I had better news for him. But it’s just one of those things where, you know, unless I finance it myself… But right now, it’s probably not going to happen.
In case you’re not familiar with The Six Million Dollar Man, which aired on ABC from 1973 to 1978 (and was followed by three TV movies between 1987 and 1994), the series featured Lee Majors as Colonel Steve Austin, who was badly injured in a NASA test flight and outfitted with bionic implants through an operation that cost… well, that much should be obvious. With his strength, speed and vision enhanced, Austin carried out dangerous missions for the Office of Scientific Intelligence. Of course, with inflation, naturally such an operation would cost way more nowadays, hence the title being changed to The Six Billion Dollar Man for the cinematic realm.
While a film adaptation of The Six Million Dollar Man has been in development in one form or another since the mid-1990s, Mark Wahlberg boarded the project in 2014. However, due to various director and writer changes over the years, among other obstacles, The Six Billion Dollar Man just hasn’t been able to get off the ground, though as Wahlberg said above, it was ready to go last year until Warner Bros. pressed pause. While Wahlberg isn’t willing to say with 100% certainty that The Six Billion Dollar Man will never happen, for now, it’s been put on ice, though we’ll let you know if it’s eventually thawed.
If you’re looking to watch Mark Wahlberg in a new action setting, you can see him playing Sully opposite Tom Holland’s Nathan Drake in Uncharted, another movie Wahlberg was attached to for a long time. It’s playing in theaters now, but if you’d rather learn what’s coming later in the year, look through the lineup of 2022 movie releases.
