Mark Wahlberg has spent a decade developing his passion project remake of classic ’70s series The Six Million Dollar Man, but at this stage, he’s better off letting it go. For children growing up during the 1970s, the original show was appointment television. The Six Million Dollar Man cast Lee Majors as astronaut Steve Austin, who is rebuilt with bionic limbs and a bionic eye following a terrible crash. As the series’ now iconic intro narration reveals, the government remade him “Better… stronger… faster.”
The Six Million Dollar Man ran for three TV movies and five seasons, in addition to creating spinoffs like The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner. Despite being a pop culture juggernaut in its heyday, the show was curiously absent from the TV show movie revivals of the late ’90s and early ’00s, be it Mission: Impossible or Charlie’s Angels. That’s not for lack of trying, however, as Mark Wahlberg has tried to remake The Six Million Dollar Man since 2014. Despite his efforts, it has yet to come together.
Mark Wahlberg’s Six Million Dollar Man Would Be A Tough Sell In 2024
According to an in-depth article at The Wrap on the battle to remake The Six Million Dollar Man, Wahlberg signed on because he was a big fan of the Majors’ series. This can be seen in the actor’s almost single-minded determination to make the film happen, even though the project would be a hard sell to modern audiences. Simply put, The Six Million Dollar Man is a uniquely ’70s property and one younger audiences have awareness of.
The planned remake – which often goes under the working title Six Billion Dollar Man – would need to reignite interest in a dated premise, which is an uphill battle in itself. Just because a movie is based on a once popular series, that doesn’t guarantee box office success. For example, the big-screen remixes of The Man from UNCLE or The A-Team had big budgets and major stars, and both did lukewarm business and failed to launch planned sequels.
The Six Million Dollar Man was a hit because it was, in essence, a prototype superhero show. Austin’s bionic upgrades allowed him to pull off feats no ordinary man could, and audiences lapped that up in the ’70s. Today, movies and TV shows are flooded with similar characters, so the premise no longer holds the appeal it once did. To stand out among the crowd, a modern-day Six Million Dollar Man would need to do something fresh with the core idea.
The Six Million Dollar Man Doesn’t Need A Remake
The crux of the issue with Wahlberg’s reboot is that it doesn’t really need to happen. Outside of perhaps a tongue-in-cheek version like the upcoming The Fall Guy movie – a remake of another popular Lee Majors show, incidentally – it’s difficult to picture what a modern, grounded take on Six Million Dollar Man would look like. The premise was fresh and exciting when the show debuted in 1973, but while the technology the best episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man once predicted are less science fiction than science fact now, what’s the big hook 50 years later?
This is the key reason why Wahlberg’s revival is having trouble moving forward. Rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t quite fit into the modern blockbuster template, while Wahlberg’s star isn’t quite what it used to be when he first signed on.
The Six Million Dollar Man’s Development Hell: A History
Going back to the aforementioned Wrap article, The Six Million Dollar Man movie has spent close to 30 years cycling through actors and filmmakers. Kevin Smith took a crack at a screenplay in 1995, before Jim Carrey and Todd Phillips became linked to a comedic reboot dubbed The Six Billion Dollar Man in 2002, which later fell apart. The complex rights issues surrounding the property have also dogged its development, including a take with Chris Rock.
This includes the current Wahlberg era, where his regular collaborator Peter Berg signed on to helm in 2014 before leaving a couple of years later. Since then, the film has had a revolving door of directors, including Travis Knight, while Warner Bros is said to have raked up $9 million in development fees for a film that still hasn’t happened. Despite the pessimistic tone of The Wrap piece, Wahlberg himself told Screen Rant the project was still very much in development.
Mark Wahlberg Gives New, Much More Optimistic Update On His Classic ’70s Show Remake
We’ve got the rights again, we’re looking at making that movie – hopefully soon! Again, ticking clock. Thank God, it’s an older guy who they feel like has some real-life experience that makes it worth it for him to be the subject of this experiment.
Wahlberg’s The Six Million Dollar Man could get an unexpected boost if Ryan Gosling’s The Fall Guy is a hit, but as the actor states, the clock is ticking. It feels like if the remake doesn’t move ahead within the next couple of years with him in the lead, then it probably won’t happen at all; time will tell if that’s a good or bad thing.
The Six Million Dollar Man
- Cast
- Lee Majors , Richard Anderson
- Release Date
- March 7, 1973
- Seasons
- 5
