Mark Wahlberg's Beloved Action Comedy Is Battling Tom Cruise on the Streaming Charts

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Mark Wahlberg on the red carpet for Play Dirty

Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.

Paramount+ has continually advertised itself as the home of the Mission: Impossible franchise and many of Tom Cruise's biggest action hits. That's been especially true since the arrival of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning on the platform back in December, spurring a bevy of the superstar's films to rank as among the platform's most-watched. However, another action icon crept up on the charts this week to challenge his reign — Mark Wahlberg. The two-time Oscar nominee's buddy cop action comedy The Other Guys rose to #6 among all movies in the U.S., passing Cruise's billion-dollar legacy sequel Top Gun Maverick, but falling a few spots shy of the aforementioned final adventure of Ethan Hunt.

Released in 2010, The Other Guys paired Wahlberg up with an unlikely and surprisingly perfect partner in Will Ferrell. They play detectives Terry Hoitz and Allen "Gator" Gamble, one a once-promising officer now widely reviled for accidentally shooting Yankees legend Derek Jeter during Game 7 of the World Series, and the other a meek forensic accountant content to be a pencil pusher in the NYPD office. When the precinct's top detectives and their personal idols, Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson), die in the line of duty by leaping off a building and missing the bushes, however, a chance opens for them to spread their wings and fly like a peacock. A minor case involving a scaffolding permit violation suddenly expands into a much more serious affair with New York power players that lets the partners show the other officers what they're truly made of.

The film was one of many collaborations between writer-director Adam McKay and Ferrell throughout the years, alongside other comedic darlings like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers. Like those titles, it was also another hit for the duo, making a solid $170 million at the box office and earning a Certified Fresh 78% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with high praise for Ferrell and Wahlberg's dynamic in a wacky parody of buddy cop films and action tropes in general. The Other Guys also boasted a killer cast beyond its leads and the short but memorable appearances of Johnson and Jackson. Rounding out the bunch were Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan, Ray Stevenson, Lindsay Sloane, and many more.

Wahlberg Returned to Action Comedy in 2025

2025 was another productive year for Wahlberg, not only featuring the action thriller Flight Risk and the Shane Black crime caper Play Dirty, but also a return to action comedy with a sequel to his streaming megahit, The Family Plan. Wahlberg reprised his role as assassin-turned-family man Dan Morgan, who, three years after taking his family on the run, is starting to sense them growing apart. Determined to spend the holidays together, he whisks everyone to London where his daughter is studying abroad, unknowingly landing him in the crosshairs of an unforeseen enemy, played by Game of Thrones favorite Kit Harington. With a globetrotting adventure and a big new star along for the ride with the also-returning Michelle Monaghan, Zoe Colletti, and Van Crosby, it's been a fixture atop the Apple TV streaming charts since its release in November, only being seriously rivaled by Brad Pitt's racing blockbuster F1.