Mark Wahlberg has shown on countless occasions that he can be a great actor when handed the right material, with an Academy Award nomination under his belt for The Departed as well as a Golden Globe nod for The Fighter, while he’s also hugely underrated as a comic talent.
However, it can’t be argued that the majority of his most forgettable movies tend to be the action thrillers that have become his bread and butter over the last two decades. Wahlberg always felt like a strange choice to play the human lead in Michael Bay’s fourth and fifth Transformers movies, and there was very little about his performances in either Age of Extinction or The Last Knight to dispel any doubts surrounding his suitability for the role.
Of course, the flesh and blood characters were very much a secondary concern during Bay’s tenure, something that will hopefully be remedied by one or both of the upcoming Transformers projects in development. Creed II director Steven Caple Jr.’s reboot is set for release next summer, and to the best of our knowledge, the Beast Wars adaptation being scripted by James Vanderbilt is still bubbling away on the back burner as well.
Insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming, though, that Paramount want Wahlberg back as Cade Yeager in one of the next Transformers blockbusters, but the tipster doesn’t divulge anything else. Richtman said the exact same thing about Megan Fox just a few days ago, too, not to mention a raft of further speculation about the hypothetical future of the franchise, so it’s probably best to wait and see what the studio has in store. That being said, you’d imagine that any connections to the Michael Bay era wouldn’t exactly be a top priority given the overwhelmingly negative critical reactions and desire from audiences for a completely fresh start.
