Damián Szifrón, who was nominated this year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, was selected to write the screenplay for the reboot film of the classic 1970s Bionic Man tale. The Six Billion Dollar Man, to star Mark Wahlberg (Ted, Shooter, The Italian Job) as Steve Austin, will be directed by Peter Berg (Battleship, Hancock).
“I couldn’t be more honored and grateful. Such a major challenge represents a great opportunity,” Szifrón said in a press release this week. “The themes surrounding this beloved property allow for the creation of a memorable sci-fi actioner as well as a bold spy thriller. Expectations are high and I’ll do my best to deliver the strongest basis for an amazing cinematic experience.”
The Argentinian writer/director won numerous awards internationally for his film Wild Things, including the Oscar nod. He has also penned and directed several Latin TV series.
The film will be based on the characters in the classic TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man, and its source material, the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, reviewed previously at borg.comhere.
Finally Steve Austin will make it to the big screen 42 years after Martin Caidin first created the man who was barely alive, rebuilt, better, stronger and faster than he was before in his novel Cyborg. And it’s been 36 years since the 1970s popular TV series went off the air.
And the best part? Mark Wahlberg has been tapped by the Weinstein Co. to play not the Six Million Dollar Man, but the Six Billion Dollar Man in The Six Billion Dollar Man. We at borg.com couldn’t be happier with the selection of Wahlberg if we were allowed to hand pick the actor to play the Bionic Man ourselves. Wahlberg is an actor cranking out some of the most enjoyable films around for the past 15 years, from The Italian Job to The Departed to Shooter to The Happening to Ted to the latest Transformers.
Thankfully, the parody film rumored to be “in the works” supposedly to star Jim Carrey then Robert Downey, Jr. then Leonardo DiCaprio, is now off the table. The original Bionic Man, Lee Majors, expressed concern about a parody earlier this year at Planet Comicon. No worries now!
Wahlberg sported a similar white track suit in Pain and Gain. Will he don the red track suit for Steve Austin?
The Six Billion Dollar Man is expected to start production in 2015 with a 2016 release.
Entertainment press across the British Empire to Latin America and from the Daily India to Latino Review to the Uk Daily News have reported on supposed discussions over the past few weeks on a new movie in the works based on Martin Caidin’s original 1972 Bionic Man novel Cyborg, the source for the Six Million Dollar Man TV series.
Running Man DiCaprio
The alleged discussions are over a script, that, depending on the source, may or may not be called The Six Billion Dollar Man, stress on the Billion. Supposedly it’s the Weinsteins and Universal who are having those discussions and working on the project, with Bryan Singer pegged as the director being courted to helm the project. And the man to play Steve Austin? Leonardo diCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio? At 37, I guess he could make it work in some effort to try to update the character for the 21st century.
DiCaprio flying over desert in stunt plane in The Aviator
Kevin Smith has previously said he had a script for a Bionic Man movie circulating for years, ultimately to end up as the currently running Bionic Man comic book series co-written by Phil Hester for Dynamite Comics, which as a series is pretty good both as an update to the 1970s TV series and respectful to Caidin’s original story. But this is not the same project as the Weinstein/Singer film.
A comedy spoof has also been rumored, called the Forty Thousand Dollar Man, and supposedly discussions have occurred with Jim Carrey for a similar project. Let’s hope this one is false.
Leonardo DiCaprio as jet pilot in Catch Me if You Can
Of, course, none of this is real until we hear something from Singer or DiCaprio. So far, nothing, just the international media speculating.
If this is all true, Singer has a good feel for genre film. He wrote X-Men, X2, X-Men: First Class and Superman Returns, and directed great suspenseful flicks like The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie. As director of a few episodes and executive producer of the series that is the best medical series ever on TV, House M.D., he may have a nice edge for the science and medicine of the Bionic Man mythos. So he gets our thumbs up to lead up a big screen Bionic Man.
Genre director and Trek fan Bryan Singer had a cameo in Star Trek Nemesis
I’ll admit I’d like to see a twist on the story with an older actor like Scott Bakula as Steve Austin, or someone like Sam Shepard playing test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, since we’re talking about a seasoned astronaut and test pilot. Of course Shepard was 40 when he made The Right Stuff, and DiCaprio is 37. I’d rather see someone whose general appearance is like Scott Glenn or Dennis Quaid vs DiCaprio, who, even with make-up, like playing Howard Hughes in The Aviator, looks perpetually young, and nicely cast as pretty boy Jay Gatsby in the soon to be released The Great Gatsby, he’s not as grisly looking as you’d think of for the typical test pilot. Still, DiCaprio has had enough diverse roles that he could probably easily give some kind of new twist on Steve Austin. And we’ve already seen him crash a plane in The Aviator and pose as a pilot, and do a lot of running, in Catch Me if You Can.
A movie would ahve to have the slow motion running and old theme
What’s not a rumor is that Universal Pictures confirmed last year that Bryan Singer will direct another sci-fi reboot, a new Battlestar Galactica film that will not be based on the recent Sci Fi Channel TV series. Very little detail has been released on that project, too.
With every new year that passes and with emerging new technologies, a real human cyborg might become more and more possible, so it is fun to think about updating Steve Austin. We’ll obviously keep our ears perked for more news on this front.
