Mark Wahlberg Recalls Failed ‘Departed’ Sequel Pitch Involving Robert De Niro and Brad Pitt

The 'Uncharted' actor reflected on the ultimately unsuccessful 'Departed' sequel pitch during a recent interview, revealing it "didn't go very well."

February 25, 2022

A potential sequel to Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning 2006 film The Departed was the subject of a pitch at Warner Bros. that “didn’t go very well,” Mark Wahlberg recalled in a recent interview.

Speaking with KFC Radio for a nearly 30-minute discussion that closed with some Departed chatter, the Uncharted star said he hadn’t heard anything about Scorsese being involved with any attempts at continuing the original film’s story. The topic, however, did inspire the actor to reflect on a failed pitch with Departed writer William Monahan, whose other credits include Wahlberg-featuring fare like The Gambler and Mojave.

“Let me tell you what happened,” Wahlberg told the hosts around 25 minutes into the interview. “They talked about that, they talked about a prequel, and then a sequel. I went into a meeting with Bill Monahan, William Monahan, at Warner Brothers to pitch the sequel to The Departed. He wanted me to go with him, and this was after it had won Best Picture and it was a big success and all that. And let’s just say the pitch didn’t go very well.”

According to Wahlberg, Monahan “didn’t really have anything fleshed out,” although this was simply part of, in Wahlberg’s words, a creative process that comes down to the writer having the freedom to figure out the idea.

“He’s fantastic,” Wahlberg said around the 26-minute mark. “So he assumed the studio would have the same kind of response that everybody else did and just kind of let him go figure it out. But, you know, they like to have things well-thought-out and planned, so that pitch didn’t go well.”

From there, the KFC Radio team started throwing out ideas for a sequel, including the enlistment of a new cast of “A-listers.” This prompted Wahlberg to point out an additional facet of the pitch, and arguably its most enticing detail.

“That’s what they were talking about, like, [Robert] De Niro and Brad Pitt, you know, that sort of thing,” he added, as seen in the full video up top.

Scorsese fans will next be treated with Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Departed alum Leonardo DiCaprio and the aforementioned De Niro. The film, based on David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name, was revealed this week to be arriving in November.