Mark Wahlberg has starred in some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood. He was the lead in Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes film. His most commercially successful venture was in The Transformers franchise where he starred as Cade Yeager. His star power and Michael Bay’s bombastic presentation of the films boosted the franchise to new commercial heights.
After debuting in Transformers: Age of Extinction, Wahlberg returned for the sequel Transformers: The Last Knight. He seems to have been physically drained from the filming experience of the latter and he admits that he will forever remember the physical toll the film put him on.
Mark Wahlberg Will Always Remember The Physical Turmoil While Filming Transformers
Mark Wahlberg debuted in the Transformers franchise with 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction. He led the human element of the film and provided a unique star power to an already highly successful franchise. However, filming the movie was a hard time as Wahlberg had to perform various challenging physical activities and tons of imaginative work.
While promoting Transformers: The Last Knight on HeyUGuys, Wahlberg talked about how much work goes to bring such a big movie to life. He also admits that he will always remember the physical toll that the movie had on him as he was constantly on wires, harnesses and performing many heavy-duty action sequences in the film. He said,
“I think even after being a part of them you think ‘Ok I get it I can visualize it’. But I haven’t seen the finished version of this movie yet and I think when I see it, I’ll still be remembering the pain and aggravation of being in a harness and getting your butt kicked for five months.”
Wahlberg finding the physical part of these franchises challenging may be the main reason why he quit after this film. While he starred in an action-adventure film with Tom Holland in Uncharted, that film was mainly focused on Holland and Wahlberg was a supporting character. He has not led any big-budget franchise ever since Transformers.
Mark Wahlberg Doesn’t Believe Michael Bay is Done With Transformers
After Transformers: The Last Knight, director Michael Bay announced that it was his final film in the franchise and that he wouldn’t be involved in future movies. But Mark Wahlberg believes that he will be back someday with a new idea for the franchise sooner or later.
In an interview with Comicbook.com, Wahlberg says that Bay always ends up claiming that each Transformers film will be his last as they are very hard to make and they physically drain him. He believes that Bay will once again be in the director’s chair with a new idea for a Transformers film in the future. He said,
“Right now, he says he doesn’t want to do another film and he says that after every film because they are so difficult to make and he pretty much has to do it single-handedly, even with all the help that he has because all of the movie is in his mind.
So he’ll decide that and I would be hard-pressed to see him walk away and put it in somebody else’s control and care. I mean, that’s just the Michael that I know, but you never know, sometimes people decide to move on, so we’ll see what happens.”
The franchise has since released Bumblebee, a spin-off film that served as a prequel to the films that came before. A standalone sequel was released in 2023 called Transformers: Rise of the Beasts which was a financial disappointment at the box office. It remains to be seen if Bay returns to helm a potential entry in the franchise.
Also read: Mark Wahlberg’s Transformers Franchise Has Peter Dinklage in a Role Almost No One Knows About
