“We were so close”: the missed opportunity that almost cost Mark Wahlberg’s agent his job
Mark Wahlberg nearly got involved with one of the most controversial films of the 21st century.
He’s often lampooned and speaks out of turn, but Wahlberg might surprisingly be one of the most savvy actors in Hollywood right now. He has built-in an audience that will go see his films, no matter what, and has managed to toggle between streaming releases and mass-scale theatrical titles. His ego is part of the charm, especially since he is a much better actor than he is given credit for.
Although there aren’t many musicians who are able to be taken completely seriously as actors, Wahlberg made a case for himself by working alongside such great directors as Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, James Gray, David O Russell, Peter Berg, and M Night Shyamalan. Even if he has tended to work on more commercial, less ambitious projects in recent years, he can sometimes pull out a performance that takes everyone by surprise, such as the hilarious role in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain or his intense part in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World.
The actor is often boastful about his career, which makes sense given how much autonomy he has over it. Starting with 2007’s We Own the Night, he has served as a producer on many of the films that he starred in, and even earned a ‘Best Picture’ nomination for his role in making The Fighter. In addition to reality television, documentaries, and Emmy-nominated prestige shows like HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Wahlberg has also taken an interest in film projects that he wouldn’t have necessarily starred in.
He is a smart enough producer to know that any bestselling novel is likely to have potential as an adaptation, which may explain why there is such a bitter fight between studios to attain the rights. Wahlberg admitted that he really wanted to be a producer behind Fifty Shades of Grey, but that his agent, Ari Emanuel, was not able to obtain the rights.
“I almost fired my agent Ari,” he recalled, “Not because I wanted to play the part. We were aware of the book very early on, and we were close to securing the rights, and then we get into this bidding war. We were so close.”
Fifty Shades of Grey may not have impressed literary critics, but the sexually-explicit romantic novels (which were inspired by the author’s Twilight fan-fiction) were massive successes that nearly guaranteed a hit franchise. Wahlberg may have ended up with a massive hit on his hands had he managed to join the project, but the rights were acquired by Universal Pictures with Sam-Taylor Johnson installed as the director.
The film quickly proved itself to be ‘critic-proof’, where it was met with terrible reviews, even earning the Razzie award for ‘Worst Picture’, but it still managed to make almost $570million at the global box office, which is one of the highest-grossing R-rated releases of all time. It was followed by two sequels that did just as well, despite being received in the same way.
Among the many complaints with the Fifty Shades of Grey films was that they felt unusually safe and not very sexy, despite the provocative nature of the material. There’s no guarantee that Wahlberg would have made the films any better, but he almost certainly would have come up with something that was more interesting.
