Mark Wahlberg, hamburger extraordinaire, found himself on a couch belonging to Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night and decided to use the opportunity to tease a possible collab with LeBron James. For those really pushing for that semi-controversial Space Jam sequel, let's just get this little fact out of the way right now: This tease of a movie idea has absolutely nothing to do with that.
"[Lebron] and I are talking about doing a movie together," Wahlberg revealed on Fallon's Tonight Show Tuesday after showing a photo of LeBron hanging in his home gym. "It's actually a great idea. It's kinda like based in and around the fantasy league. So these guys get to go to one of those fantasy camps, and me and LeBron have a situation." Hmmm. A situation? Situations do make for great movies.
The last we heard of that aforementioned Space Jam sequel involved some less-than-flattering words of negativity from OG Space Jam director Joe Pytka. "Don't do it," Pytka told the Hollywood Reporter in May, shortly after Justin Lin was rumored to have stepped up to helm the project. "It's doomed. Michael Jordan was the biggest star on the planet."
With James' appearance in last year's Amy Schumer comedy Trainwreck garnering praise from damn near everyone, it would be easy to assume that James would be leaping into more movies in the years ahead. However, as James' business partner Maverick Carter recently revealed to GQ, the thought process behind taking a movie role involves much more than just hastily agreeing to do something purely for the shine.
"It wasn't his movie," Carter explained. "He's like a pleasant surprise. So if he fucked it up, no one was gonna go, LeBron's terrible. But the upside was exactly what happened: He's fucking great. Now his movie career could take off. If he never did another movie, at least people would know, Oh, he can do that. He's multifaceted. And another thing is, we didn't do that movie until he had four MVPs and two championships."
