It’s always entertaining to chart the career of Mark Wahlberg. He’s one of the few actors out there today who can easily shift between brassy blockbuster fare and buzzy prestige pics. Last year, he toplined Transformers: Age of Extinction (the year’s highest-grossing movie, and one of its worst-reviewed) and followed it up by courting Oscar in a remake of The Gambler. 2015 should prove no different – he’ll star in Ted 2 this summer then make an awards bid in this fall’s Deepwater Horizon.
Today brings the first image from that latter title, which dramatizes the immediate aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill and centers on the Deepwater Horizon’s crew members, who risked life and limb to help one another escape the exploding rig. Wahlberg is playing Mike Williams, the rig’s chief electronics technician and one of the last crew members to abandon ship; the first shot is of the actor, drenched in oil, presumably witnessing all manner of carnage unfold before his eyes.
Peter Berg is helming the pic, having taken the reins from the previously attached J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year). Though it’s disappointing that Chandor, who has delivered three terrific dramas over the last four years, isn’t involved any more, at least Berg has some experience with Wahlberg, having directed him in the very solid war pic Lone Survivor.
Here’s the synopsis:
Based on the true events that occurred on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, the story chronicles the courage of those who worked on the Deepwater Horizon and the extreme moments of bravery and survival in the face of what would become one of the biggest man-made disasters in world history.
Deepwater Horizon arrives September 30th. Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien and John Malkovich make up the supporting cast.
