How “Play Dirty” is ‘bigger’ than previous Parker novel adaptations — starring Mark Wahlberg and a ‘great group of misfits’

Mark Wahlberg is ready to be unlikable in his new heist movie, Play Dirty, but he was still nervous about what people would think of his “unapologetic” bad guy with a code.

“I didn’t have to worry about being likable, just honest, integrity, and that code of the streets,” Wahlberg tells Entertainment Weekly. “But I was a little worried how audiences were going to feel.”

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels (written under the pseudonym Richard Stark), Play Dirty stars Wahlberg as the legendary thief who goes up against the New York mob for the biggest score of his storied career. He’s a robber, con man, and killer, but he’s not actually the villain of the story.

And that’s what intrigued Wahlberg the most about taking on director Shane Black‘s new version of the character that’s been adapted many times before on the big screen.

“I wanted to go for unapologetic,” Wahlberg says. “Here’s a guy who lives in a world where hopefully you understand what the rules are and the stakes are. This is a guy who just does not compromise. He’s a very loyal guy, but if you cross him, things could be dangerous, so hopefully [audiences] would understand why he was the way he was when he encountered people along the way that he wasn’t so nice to. If you’re loyal, he’ll jump in front of a bullet for you, but if you’re not, then no matter how close you think you’re getting with him, it’s never going to be okay.”

Wahlberg says he’s been “a big Shane Black fan for a long time,” so signing on to star as Parker was an easy yes after Robert Downey Jr. had to step down from the role. (Downey Jr. remained on the project as a producer.) And while Wahlberg had more time than he originally planned to prepare for the role (due to delays from the writers’ and actors’ strikes), he admits he didn’t actually read any of the Parker novels. However, he did watch other adaptations of the character, including Point Blank, Robert Duvall’s The Outfit, and “a couple of the other” films to “see what everybody else had done and how we could make this one different.”

Director/co-writer Black, meanwhile, has read the Parker novels more times than he can count. He’s loved the books for 40 years after discovering the series when he was very young, so he jumped at the chance to adapt the character when the rights became available. But instead of starting with the first book, The Hunter, like so many other adaptations, Black wanted to chart his own course.

“It’s an original story peppered with stuff from the entire series,” Black says. “There’s a famous line which is right from the books where a guy says to Parker, ‘Wait, don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.’ And he takes out a gun and says, ‘Now you’re the message,’ and he shoots him. It’s full of things like that, but the heist itself is something of a slightly bigger scale.”

Play Dirty actually begins “after the events of the early Parker books,” Black adds, so this movie is almost like a sequel to the novels. “We even make reference to the stuff that happened in those other movies that we are not doing that, that so many people tend to make again and again.”

Black describes the movie as part heist movie, part thriller, and part cat-and-mouse caper full of action and “edge.” And Wahlberg loves how the action and twists are balanced by the character-driven story.

“Everything really relies on the chemistry between the characters, these guys who live in that gray area who are still guys that you’re going to want to root for,” Wahlberg says.

Filling out the ensemble of unique characters is LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Chukwudi Iwuji, Nat Wolff, Thomas Jane, and Tony Shalhoub as Parker’s crew and mob enemies, some of whom can be seen in EW’s exclusive sneak peek photos (above).

“Between myself and LaKeith’s character, it’s a bit of a two-hander,” Wahlberg says. “But Tony Shalhoub, Nat Wolff, everybody who came to play brought a lot of really interesting characters into the fold. We had a great group of misfits — there’s a lot of comic relief in there.”

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Wahlberg is especially excited for people to see Shalhoub’s turn as the “great villain,” the mob boss looking for revenge on Parker.

“Tony and I have this kind of ongoing thing where I’ve been torturing him since Pain and Gain,” Wahlberg says with a laugh. “I continue to give it to him every chance I get. He said one day the shoe’s going to be on the other foot and he’s going to have the upper hand, so we’ll see.”

Play Dirty premieres Oct. 1 on Prime Video.

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