Actor-turned-director Peter Berg has proven to have a sure hand when it comes to turning true stories into compelling big-screen experiences. Friday Night Lights, his third directorial effort, dramatized the lives of a real-life high school football team in Texas to great effect, while the more recent Lone Survivor kept tensions high in relating the true-life account of a small military team and their ill-fated mission in Afghanistan. The latter movie displayed a ferocious spirit, even when dealing with tragic events.
Mark Wahlberg starred in Lone Survivor and it's evident that he and Berg worked well together, both in front of and behind the scenes. In August 2014, the ever-busy Wahlberg agreed to star in Deepwater Horizon as a member of an oil-rig crew that suffered a catastrophe, leading to an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. At that point J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost) was attached to direct. A few months later, however, Chandor departed due to "creative differences" and Berg came on board.
The first official photo showed Wahlberg looking the part of an oil-rig worker. Now new photos, via Collider, provide a more revealing look at the movie, which will evidently set up the domestic situation for Wahlberg's character before moving onto the disaster on the oil rig; Kate Hudson can be seen as his wife.
Gina Rodriguez also stars as the first worker to take note of serious problems on the oil rig.
Kurt Russell costars; he appears to be another oil-rig worker.
Dylan O'Brien costars as a young crew member.
Finally, we get a look at Berg (left) talking to Wahlberg and O'Brien on set.
Deepwater Horizon will head to theaters on September 30. Berg and Wahlberg will continue their partnership with Patriots Day, another true-life thriller, this one about the Boston Marathon bombing, which is set for release on January 13, 2017. After that, they'll team for Mile 22, a thriller about a CIA officer who must work with an Indonesian police officer to investigate corruption.
