24 Frames reports that Mark Wahlberg and a much recently trimmed down Jonah Hill have become attached to Good Time Gang, an original buddy cop action/comedy that is promised to be a ‘new spin on the Lethal Weapon franchise’.

The new take, it’s said, is to have a bigger emphasis on action over laughs. The story;

“follows two party-happy mercenaries who decide to take on a more serious case involving a terrorist, only to find their mission complicated when they discover one of them is related to the target.”

The film has been scripted by Max Landis (yes, the son of the legendary American Werewolf in London director John Landis) and is set up at the indie outfit RCR Pictures, financed by world poker champion Chris Ferguson. Robin Schorr (Food Inc) will produce.

Buddy action/cop territory is no stranger a genre to either Wahlberg or Hill, especially recently as the former is just coming off the Will Ferrell movie The Other Guys and Hill has just wrapped photography on the 21 Jump Street remake. Wahlberg has pretty much played a cop in one of every two or three movies he makes and he’ll never escape the badge it seems and it’ll be cool to see Hill at his new size playing a much more legitimate action hero. Let’s hope though when they hire someone as funny as Hill they don’t totally throw his talent for comedy out of the window.

And whilst the legendary John Landis’ best years seem to be decades behind him right now, his son Max is showing great enthusiasm and drive to make himself a notable force in the industry. Having penned a few little seen genre efforts, Max Landis struck a huge deal earlier this year for his original fantasy epic Amnesty (intriguingly said to be a cross between J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Ludlum) when Universal Pictures came knocking and picked up his work for Ron Howard to direct and produce at Imagine Entertainment.

Very quickly he had made the big time and it wasn’t long before 20th Century Fox also hired him to write a new Frankenstein take (one of the many in production right now) at their studio. With all that and the talent that has been attracted to his new script Good Time Gang, suddenly it seems there is a new Landis in town.

No director yet on Good Time Gang (would it be wrong to suggest his father could have made it great in his hey day?) and Hill/Wahlberg have busy schedules so don’t expect this one to happen just yet.

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