Dwayne Johnson
Just days after winning the top spot at the box office with their action feature Pain & Gain, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Mark Wahlberg are back at it.
The duo are teaming up for a half-hour dramedy pilot set up at HBO about the lives of retired athletes living in Miami, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, with Johnson attached to star.
The untitled Miami athletes project hails from Stephen Levinson (Entourage), who will pen the script and executive produce alongside Mark Wahlberg, Johnson, Dany Garcia and Peter Berg, the latter of whom will direct the pilot. A search is under way for a showrunner, with HBO looking to film the pilot in the fall.
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The Miami athletes dramedy continues the premium cable network's relationship with Levinson and Wahlberg, whose credits also include HBO vehicles Boardwalk Empire, How to Make It in America and In Treatment.
Johnson is no stranger to the sports world, having played college football before kicking off his World Wrestling Federation career and becoming one of the sport's best and most renowned personalities. The pilot order comes more than a week after Johnson had hernia surgery to repair an injury suffered in April during a championship title match against John Cena. (Cena came out on top.)
The pilot marks Johnson's latest small-screen effort. In June, he'll host TNT's reality competition series The Hero, in which 10 people live in a house and participate in various missions that test their brains, brawn and even their morality. The HBO vehicle, should it go to series, would mark his first small-screen series regular role following features The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and countless others.
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For Berg, the Johnson starrer will bring the number of HBO pilots he's attached to direct to two, joining Damon Lindelof's adaptation of The Leftovers. He also has pulp thriller Bloodline in contention at NBC, which has been building steam heading into this month's upfront presentations.Â
The Miami sports dramedy pilot order comes a day after HBO picked up critical darling Veep for a third season and just weeks before the premiere of Christopher Guest series Family Tree. HBO also has the six-episode entry Getting On and Stephen Merchant's Hello Ladies in the works. On the development side, the cabler also has pilots People in New Jersey, Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, the Duplass brothers' Togetherness, the San Francisco-set Michael Lannan entry in the works.
Levinson is repped by WME and Leverage Entertainment; Wahlberg is with WME, Leverage and Sloane Offer; and Berg is with WME and Hirsch Wallerstein.
Email:Â Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit
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