Mark Wahlberg’s Patriots’ Day Combining with Boston Strong

Mark Wahlberg Photo by Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

Patriots’ Day, the upcoming Mark Wahlberg produced movie about the Boston Marathon bombings, is getting a bit of a shake up.

According to the Boston Globe, Wahlberg and CBS Films have purchased the rights to Boston Strong—another film based on the events surrounding the 2013 tragedy—from 20th Century Fox. The acquisition means that the two projects will now be combined into one movie.

Originally, Wahlberg was slated to be starring as former police commissioner Ed Davis in Patriots’ Day, while Casey Affleck was briefly rumored to be attached to Boston Strong. He later denied his involvement in the project, which is based on the book by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge.

Now that the rights to Boston Strong are heading over the CBS Films, Wahlberg will now play Boston police detective Sergeant Danny Keeler, who was an integral part of the response on the finish line as well as during the subsequent manhunt for Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

It will be interesting to see how the news will affect production for Stronger, the other film about the Marathon bombings that is being produced by Lionsgate. The project is based on the book by survivor Jeff Bauman and is tentatively set to star Jake Gyllenhaal.