While promoting the film “Broken City,” Mark Wahlberg revealed that he turned down the offer because the script didn’t make any sense to him. “I couldn’t understand a word of the dialogue,” he told Total Film. He recalled explaining to J.J. Abrams, “I can’t do this, I think you’re really talented but I couldn’t do it.” Despite not totally understand what was needed of his character, Wahlberg did end up seeing the film and thought Abrams had done “a really good job.”
The actor explained that while he wasn’t a huge fan of science fiction and hadn’t seen the original “Star Trek,” he did see the original Star Wars trilogy and was totally down to star in Abrams’ reboot of that series. “I’m interested to see what J.J. does. I probably wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with J.J. again,” Wahlberg explained. “So if he wanted me to do something, even if I couldn’t fully understand it I’d probably give it a shot.”
And while that “Star Wars” dream never came to be, there’s still a chance for the actor to appear in other projects by Abrams like “Cloverfield” (via Collider) or “Portal” (via The Verge). And seeing as Wahlberg has starred in the likes of “Planet of the Apes” and the “Transformers” series (via IMDB), he’s got the experience it takes to star in a sci-fi adventure.