You expect to hear Mark Wahlberg’s named attached to a buddy-action-comedy premise. His resume is littered with similar tough-guy roles, from The Other Guys and Date Night to the grittier Max Payne or We Own the Night. But when Wahlberg’s rumored partner is Jonah Hill, the project takes on an intriguing twist.
The two actors will team for Good Time Gang, a film that’s being set up through RCR Pictures and penned by Max Landis (son of the legendary John Landis), according to the L.A. Times. Wahlberg and Hill would play “party-happy mercenaries” -- which automatically sounds bizarre -- who agree to a job involving a known terrorist, then find out one of the two men are related to their intended target. The anonymous source who was briefed on the nature of the project says that it is being constructed in the mold of Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon, with more of an emphasis on the action sequences over the comedy.
On second thought, the casting of Hill might not be as off-the-wall as we initially thought. The Superbad star has been easing into the action genre, writing and starring alongside Channing Tatum and Ice Cube in a
[[ http channing-tatum-boards-21-jump-street-with-jonah-hill-21977.html new www.cinemablend.com ]] 21 Jump Street reboot that just finished shooting. And he appears to be dipping his toe into more adult fare, as suggested by the latest trailer for Bennett Miller’s Moneyball.
I’m less concerned with the casting of Hill as one half of a buddy-action effort than I am with the Good Time Gang team trying to connect their project back to Lethal Weapon, which was a seminal entry in the genre and likely won’t be duplicated. Comparing your script to Shane Black’s masterpiece (yeah, I said it) sets us up for disappointment when it doesn’t live up to the self-generated hype. We can hope Gang becomes Weapon for a new generation, but it has a long way to go before that expectation becomes a reality.
