I don’t know why I didn’t mention the Mark Wahlberg factor in my most recent post about director J.C. Chandor departing Deepwater Horizon and Peter Berg taking over, but after thinking it over (and getting a call from a friend) I’m thiking it was probably a central factor. The bottom line is that the generally muted response to A Most Violent Year probably convinced Lionsgate that they wanted a less character-driven, less political, more Paul Greengrass-y approach to the material, but I’m also convinced that Wahlberg indicated to Lionsgate that he was okay with Chandor getting deep-sixed. As a friend puts it, Chandor’s departure was probably “about Mark not connecting with J.C. on some level. Put it this way — if J.C. was Mark’s guy, if they had connected, Chandor would still be on the film. It hit me when Lionsgate immediately replaced Chandor with Peter Berg, who of course directed Wahlberg on Lone Survivor and got along with him pretty well. Maybe Wahlberg disagreed with where Chandor wanted to take the film. Or maybe Mark saw the Redford thing [i.e., All Is Lost] and liked it, and then saw A Most Violent Year and didn’t like it. Who knows? But you know that when push came to shove Wahlberg almost certainly said ‘call Berg’ to Lionsgate execs, because you know that Berg is going to do what Mark wants to do. This is about Mark Wahlberg having a say-so.”