Mark Wahlberg Has Hoop Dreams for Justin Bieber

By  · Published on April 28th, 2011

Go tell your mother that Mark Wahlberg has developed a film with Justin Bieber over at Paramount that will see Wahlberg playing mentor figure to a basketball playing Bieber.

According to Deadline Lawrence, the tone of the film has been described as The Color of Money meets The Karate Kid. The remake or the original? Why don’t they clarify? It matters!

This is a perfect moment of reflection for Wahlberg. He started as a pop star, transitioned into serious acting while holding a basketball (and while playing yet another character named Mickey), and here’s a chance for him to come full circle with a kid who’s a pop star but clearly wants to enter the world of acting. Ladies and gentlemen, Justin Bieber is this generation’s Mark Wahlberg. Does that mean that in a few years, Bieber will play a porn star in a tragedy, then a soldier in the Middle East, then get a role on a Planet of the Apes movie, then alternate action roles with existential comedies on the road to two Oscar nominations? Yes, yes it does.

And, holy hell, all of that seems likely based solely on the movies coming out in the next year or two.

It also means that in 20 years, Justin Bieber will be playing a mentor figure to a young pop star trying to start an acting career by playing whatever the future version of basketball will be.

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