I loved Sixth Sense…I liked Signs. I hated The Village. I loathed The Lady in the Water. M. Night should just call it a day and be done with it already. But apparently he’s still making movies, and here’s some info on his next film.

John Leguizamo has joined the cast of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, “The Happening.”

Set to begin production in Philadelphia next month, “The Happening” is already slated for a June 13, 2008 release date, courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Recent Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg leads the cast as a science teacher who goes on the run with his family in the midst of some natural environmental disaster, some horrible happening. According to Variety, Leguizamo will play the best friend to Wahlberg’s character.

Zooey Deschanel was previously announced for the cast, though her exact capacity is unclear.

Leguizamo stars with a different Wahlberg, Mark’s brother Donnie, in Spike TV’s “The Kill Point,” which premieres this Sunday (July 22). His upcoming features include the indie “Where God Left His Shoes” and the long awaited adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

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Oh, he’ll always be Marky Mark to me.

Mark and his pals used to cruise around Massachusetts in the same stolen Monte Carlo – because it was so easy to steal.

He reveals, “We’d pop the tilt steering and he (owner) never got it fixed. “We’re hanging around, we’re hooking school… and we’d go take the car, we’d drive around and we’d hide it by my house for a couple of days and they’d find it, he’d get it back, we’d go an take it again.

“There was no radio or anything… but it was a good means of transportation and most of the time, when he found it, there was more gas (in the tank) than when we took it.

“One time he actually came out in the morning… and the poor guy tries to block the driveway and I’m not gonna stop and I’m not gonna get out because the guy’s upset and obviously this has been going on for a while.”

The car stealing is one of many incidents Wahlberg regrets from his troubled past. He adds, “A woman asked me, ‘Would you like to pay all the people back for all the stuff that you stole, all the damage that you caused?’ I said, ‘If I did, I’d be broke, my kids wouldn’t go to college.’”

PS: How great is that picture!?

The Departed’s Mark Wahlberg and Martin Scorsese are re-teaming to create a new drama series for HBO based on Atlantic City’s growth from sleepy seaside town to entertainment and gambling mecca. Scorsese will executive produce with Wahlberg and Leverage Management’s Stephen Levinson (Wahlberg and Levinson already executive produce Entourage and the upcoming drama In Treatment). The project is being developed in conjunction with the Nelson Johnson book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, which HBO has optioned. Scorsese previously visited Atlantic City in his 1986 movie The Color of Money.

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MARK WAHLBERG is glad filmmaker ANG LEE passed over him when he cast BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, because the Oscar nominee was “a little creeped out” at the prospect of having to play a gay cowboy.

The DEPARTED star reveals he and pal JOAQUIN PHOENIX were originally considered for the roles of ENNIS DEL MAR and JACK TWIST in the 2005 film – but both felt uncomfortable about sex act scenes in a tent.

Wahlberg explains, “I met with Ang Lee on that movie, I read 15 pages of the script and got a little creeped out. It was very graphic, descriptive – the spitting on the hand, getting ready to do the thing.

“I told Ang Lee, ‘I like you, you’re a talented guy, if you want to talk about it more…’ Thankfully, he didn’t.” The parts eventually went to JAKE GYLLENHAAL and HEATH LEDGER and, though Wahlberg feels it’s a film he must see, he has yet to watch Brokeback Mountain.
He adds, “I didn’t rush to see Brokeback, it’s just not my deal… Obviously, it was done in taste – look how it was received.”

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Boston-born actors and The Departed co-stars Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg are set to star in a new film about boxer ‘Irish’ Micky Ward. Paramount Pictures has fast-tracked “The Fighter,” a drama about the Massachusetts-born boxer’s unlikely road to the world lightweight title.

Ward had a series of tough losses to Arturo Gatti that are considered among the best and most brutal bouts of the past 50 years. Wahlberg would play Ward, with Damon taking the role of Danny Ecklund, Ward’s half-brother who battled drugs and the temptation of crime to become the boxer’s trainer.

House executive producer Paul Attanasio is currently working on a rewrite of the script, and if approved by Wahlberg and Damon, the picture would begin shooting in Massachusetts this summer.

Mark Wahlberg, who is up for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the 2006 thriller The Departed, tells EmpireOnline, “They told me they wanted to try to do a sequel and I said, ‘Well, I enjoyed playing the character.’

“They’re talking about bringing in (Robert) De Niro to play a senator or a congressman. You know, the corruption obviously going deeper and higher up the ranks – reaching up the political chain. So it’ll be fun.” And if it’s a success, they’re gonna do a prequel and bring everyone back…make it a trilogy.”

The film’s writer William Monahan has already started work on the sequel, which which will focus on the rogue police officer played by Wahlberg.

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The Departed was one of my FAVORITE movies of 2006, so I’d LOVE to see a sequel.