In addition to delighting us with his surprise appearance at Seth MacFarlane's SXSW panel and our scheduled interview afterward, Mark Wahlberg told MTV News Sunday that while his basketball movie with Justin Bieber has not officially been green-lit yet, the storywriting is already in full swing.
"We're waiting for the script," Wahlberg said when asked for an update on the anticipated film. "Waiting for the script. Every time I see [Bieber] or Scooter [Braun], I have to explain to them that it's a bit of a process having the script written."
Wahlberg emphasized that they want to make sure that the script is as good as it can be before they move forward into production.
"It certainly [has to be] something that's good enough to go and have green-lit and make right away," he said. "But I think it will be well worth the wait."
From what "The Fighter" star and recent birthday boy have said about the film, they're developing a basketball movie in the vein of "The Color of Money" in which Wahlberg will play a weathered baller who takes a younger player (Bieber) under his wing.
Wahlberg has said that his intuition is a big reason why he pursued the project with the pop star.
"I'm pretty intuitive," he said. "I see the guy and spent time with him, and you see what he does and how he does it, and then you actually have a conversation with him, and it's there."
Bieber has hinted that he hopes to fit a film project into his busy schedule this summer, though he didn't specifically say which film that might be.
"What's happening is: get off this tour, and then my [holiday] album's coming out, so I have to go back out and promote that album ... and then after that ... it's almost time for my next album, so then everything starts over again," Bieber told us last fall. "Hopefully, next summer I can start on a movie or something."
Source
