Mark Wahlberg has revealed his long-in-development reboot of The Six Billion Dollar Man will move forward quickly once Skydance settles the legal rights.
“You know what, I think there is finally hope for that to happen,” Wahlberg said in an interview with Collider promoting his latest movie The Family Plan. “And I think it’s kind of actually a lot to do with this movie, because hopefully Skydance will have the rights, if not fully buttoned up now, very soon, and we’ll fast track that movie to get made. So, I’m still not out of the fight, I’m still grinding every day to get it made. You know, its tough to get certain things made it’s very difficult, it was an uphill battle, but I think certain ones are worth just seeing through to the end.”
Wahlberg’s reboot is based on the popular ’70s sci-fi adventure series The Six Million Dollar Man starring Lee Majors. The series followed NASA astronaut USAF Colonel Steve Austin (Majors) whose body gets rebuilt with bionic implants following an experimental aircraft accident. With the abilities of superhuman strength, speed, and vision, Austin becomes a special agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). The series ran for five seasons on ABC from 1975 to 1978 and spawned the equally successful spinoff The Bionic Woman starring Lindsay Wagner.
Aborted attempts to bring The Six Billion Dollar Man to the big screen
Attempts to bring The Six Billion Dollar Man to the big screen began as early as 1995, when Universal hired Kevin Smith to write a screenplay that went unproduced. In the early 2000s, a comedic take on the series was planned with Jim Carrey set to star as Austin and Joker‘s Todd Philips in the director’s chair. Subsequently, the movie rights went into litigation between Universal and Miramax.
Walhberg became attached to play Austin as early as 2014, with a revolving door of directors — including Peter Berg and Damian Szifron — in contention to helm the project. After several release date changes, Bumblebee director Travis Knight and screenwriter Bill Dubuque came on board the project in 2019. As Wahlberg detailed how the rights issues delayed The Six Billion Dollar Man for years, the actor implied that Skydance will start the reboot from scratch with a new production team once the dust settles.
“We had the rights, and we were trying to get the script right at Warners and then, you know, people have the TV rights, you have the estate, and then you have, I think Universal had the international, and lots of things so now to kind of bring it out free and clear, to be able to kind of work out all those different issues and then be able to start fresh with a new writer at Skydance,” Wahlberg said. “But I’m excited because nobody does action better than David and everybody, and Dana (Goldberg) and those guys at Skydance, so I couldn’t be more excited about the possibility.”
The Six Billion Dollar Man does not have a release date.
