Deadline is reporting that Peter Berg will direct his Lone Survivor star Mark Wahlberg once again in The Six Billion Dollar Man, a film version of the 1970s TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man,” for The Weinstein Co.’s Dimension Films label. Ain’t inflation a bitch?
Wahlberg will star as former astronaut Steve Austin, who is badly damaged in an experimental plane crash but is saved by doctors who fit him with bionic replacements for both legs, his right arm and left eye. With his new bionic abilities he becomes a powerful government agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence.
The Six Billion Dollar Man will begin production sometime next year for a 2016 release. Bob Weinstein will produce along with Berg and his producing partner Sarah Aubrey, Wahlberg’s production company Closest to the Hole Productions and Wahlberg’s producing partner Stephen Levinson. Universal, which got a piece of the $150-million worldwide gross of Lone Survivor, is set to distribute.
A few years ago, Horrible Bosses screenwriters John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein wrote a parody of the original show titled “The Forty Thousand Dollar Man,” which was rewritten by Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes. Robert Downey Jr. was supposedly considering starring in it, but the project never came to fruition.
The original “Six Million Dollar Man” was based on the book “Cyborg” by Martin Caidin, and starred Lee Majors as Austin, running for five seasons on ABC from 1974-1978 and spawning merchandise as well as the spin-off show “The Bionic Woman.” No word yet on whether Wahlberg’s Steve Austin will battle Bigfoot, as Majors did.
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