luisah's: Justin Bieber To Co-Star With Mark Wahlberg In Street Ball Movie

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Justin Bieber To Co-Star With Mark Wahlberg In Street Ball Movie

Movie inspired by Bieber's participation in a charity basketball game held during NBA's All-Star weekend.
By Gil Kaufman

Justin Bieber and Mark Wahlberg
Photo: Getty Images

Justin Bieber already has one of the top-grossing documentaries of all time with "Never Say Never." And he's gotten his feet wet doing a little acting on "CSI." So it just stands to reason that his next move is to full-on star in a movie, right?

Enter superfan Mark Wahlberg, who knows a thing or two about making the transition from teenybopper pinup to movie-opening star. Wahlberg — who in August said, "the world needs Justin Bieber ... Justin Bieber is like the white Tupac" — told New York magazine this week, "Justin Bieber and I are going to do a movie together."

That's right. Wahlberg said he's in talks with Paramount on the project and hopes to set the film up at the studio following his Academy Award-winning flick "The Fighter." But most importantly, Bieber is reportedly way into it and is excited to sign on for the project. "He loves the idea," Wahlberg said. "He's been sending me video, he sent me a video of himself, and, yeah, I think he's really talented."

Wahlberg described the movie as a drama in which he would play a "reluctant mentor in an inner-city environment," but cautioned that neither he nor Bieber will sing or dance in the film. In fact, last August Wahlberg said he wouldn't break his nearly two-decade-long hip-hop silence ... unless Bieber asked him to.

Deadline Hollywood reported that the untitled drama is an exploration of street basketball in which Bieber will get a chance to show off his dramatic chops. Wahlberg and partner Stephen Levinson will produce alongside Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun. The script is being written by Ian Edelman, creator of HBO's "How to Make It in America."

"The tone of the project is described as 'The Color of Money' meets 'The Karate Kid,' and it came out of Wahlberg and Levinson seeing Bieber play ball in February during a celebrity game held during NBA All-Star Game weekend," Deadline reported.

Bieber has clearly been bitten by the acting bug. In September he raved about his guest appearance on "CSI" as Jason McCann. "I liked it because you never knew what was going to happen. Now that I'm on it, it's pretty cool," he said of the show. "It opens a different audience to the show," he explained of his appearances, "and it also helps me because a new audience that might not know me is now going to see me. So it works both ways."

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