Mark Wahlberg‘s insane workout regiment for Uncharted went viral last year, and the actor is well known for getting into incredible physical shape for the multitude of action thrillers that have been his bread and butter for the last two decades. However, the 49 year-old can be a great dramatic actor in the right project, too, as his Academy Award nomination for The Departed and Golden Globe nod for The Fighter will attest.
The last time Wahlberg produced a boxing-related biopic, David O. Russell’s aforementioned drama saw Christian Bale win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, while the movie itself was shortlisted for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The Spenser Confidential star is now chasing more awards season glory, after he revealed in a new interview that he’s set to pack on 30 pounds to play Stuart Long in Father Stu.
“After we do the boxing scenes, I get to put on as much weight as possible over the course of the film, so I’m challenging myself to put on 30 pounds in the next six weeks. … They want me to do it as healthy as possible and I’m like ‘Dude, I’ve been on such a regimen for so long, I just want to eat everything in sight. … I want to go to bakeries. I want to go to Denny’s. I want to get pancakes. I want to get everything I can possibly get my hands on’.”
Mel Gibson’s longtime partner Rosalind Ross wrote the script and will make her feature directorial debut on the project, with Gibson set to play Mark Wahlberg‘s onscreen father for the second time after Daddy’s Home 2, and Father Stu’s true-life story is so unbelievably fascinating that the dramatized retelling should already be viewed as a potential prestige picture, despite shooting only kicking off yesterday.
Stuart Long’s boxing career was cut short after a broken jaw, so he moved to Los Angeles in an effort to become a movie star, but that dream also ended when he suffered a horrendous accident on his motorcycle that saw him hit by one car and then run over by another. While recovering he said he’d had an out of body spiritual experience which led to him training to become a priest and if that wasn’t enough, he was then diagnosed with a rare degenerative muscle disease that had him confined to a motorized chair by the time he passed away in 2014. As you can see, then, there’s one hell of a story there to be told.
