Mark Wahlberg plays an extraordinary athlete who meets an even more extraordinary dog in his next film.
On Wednesday, Lionsgate and Tooley Entertainment shared a trailer for Wahlberg’s film Arthur the king exclusively with PEOPLE.
The new film, based on the 2017 book by Swedish extreme athlete and writer Mikael Lindnord. Arthur: The dog who crossed the jungle to find a homestars 52-year-old Wahlberg as Lindnord (named Michael Light in the film), who meets his four-legged friend Arthur while participating in an adventure racing competition.
Arthur the kingThe trailer shows Michael as he and his teammate (Simu Liu) prepare for a huge endurance race through the Dominican Republic. As Michael’s wife and daughter follow his journey, he twice encounters the same stray dog hundreds of miles away. The dog even seems to save his life by barking at him just before he would go off the edge of the cliff.
Inspired by the dog’s seemingly impossible journey across the race course to keep up with him, Michael and his team take the dog, name it “King Arthur” and make it their mascot on the way to the inspiring finish.
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Sim Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, Mark Wahlberg and Ali Suliman in ‘Arthur the King’.
Carlos Rodriguez/Courtesy of Lionsgate
In real life, the film’s subject, Lindnord, spent six years living with Arthur after meeting the dog during a 2014 championship adventure race in Ecuador, according to a 2016 ESPN story about them. Lindnord announced Arthur’s death in an Instagram post in 2020, writing that the dog’s “life was bigger than life itself and I still see and hear you all over the house.”
“Arthur became a part of our family as soon as he walked in the front door of our house,” Lindnord tells PEOPLE in a statement about the film, recalling that the dog “slept through the night like [had] lived with us forever” when he first brought Arthur back to Sweden.
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‘Arthur the King’ poster.
Courtesy of Lionsgate
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“Arthur’s beautiful soul touched many people and for us in the family he was the best family member you could ever dream of,” adds the author. “He was like a guardian angel to our children.”
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Sim Liu and Mark Wahlberg in the movie ‘Arthur the King’.
Carlos Rodriguez/Courtesy of Lionsgate
“I’ve now been lucky enough to work with Mark on two films,” director Simon Cellan Jones, who also directed Wahlberg in the upcoming Apple TV+ movie Family plan, says LJUDI in a statement. “They were completely different projects and experiences, but they had one thing in common – Marko was a pleasure to work on both of them!”
“On [The Family Plan], happily broke the rule about working with children. Now, thanks to Mikael’s incredible book, he’s starring opposite an inspirational dog,” adds Jones of the “incredible range” Wahlberg brings to his roles. “Trust me, you’re going to love the relationship between Mark and Arthur.”
In addition to Wahlberg and Liu, the new film also stars Juliet Rylance, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman and Paul Guilfoyle.
Arthur the king out in theaters on March 22, 2024.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education