The man behind one of the most enjoyable ‘Transformers’ movies ‘Bumblebee’, Travis Knight has been set to take the helm on the long in development movie adaptation of the ‘Six Billion Dollar Man’.
Mark Wahlberg has also been cast in the project as Col. Steve Austin, a downed pilot who is saved by an operation that makes him part machine.
The movie had been in development at The Weinstein Company until Warner Bros. took it over. Lost co-writer Damian Szifron had been linked as a director at the time but he soon moved on. Mel Gibson had also been interested in the director’s chair at one point too.
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The TV series ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ ran for 5 seasons between 1974 and 1978, the former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin was portrayed by American actor Lee Majors. Austin has superhuman strength due to bionic implants and is employed as a secret agent by a fictional U.S. government office titled OSI. The series was based on the Martin Caidin novel ‘Cyborg’.
The series also gave birth to a spin-off series called ‘The Bionic Woman’ which ran from 1976 to 1978, Three television movies featuring both bionic characters were also produced from 1987 to 1994.
Knight made his feature film directorial debut with ‘Bumblebee’ which made a staggering $466 million at the global box office. He is also the founder of stop-motion animation studio Laika, which is behind the titles ‘Coraline’, ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ and most recently ‘Missing Link’.
Wahlberg was last seen in ‘Instant Family’ alongside Rose Byrne playing a couple who foster three kids from the same family encountering a few hilarious hiccups along the way. He will also be reuniting with Peter Berg on the crime drama ‘Wonderland’ starring alongside Winston Duke and Alan Arkin and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s ‘Good Joe Bell’.
