'Date Night'

Yeah, Mark Wahlberg has come a long way since his Marky Mark days. In fact, if there is anyone that the young and cherubic pop icons should try to emulate, it's him. Wrenching your way out of your niche is one thing. Moving from a good, vibrating, spunky underwear model to notable big-screen name -- that takes talent. But these days, that's talent has been squeezed into the serious with no room left for laughs.Until now. Five years after his Huckabees angst, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Wahlberg is signing on to 20th Century Fox's upcoming comedy, Date Night. In fact, this will be his first all-out mainstream comedy, setting aside existential detectives and Middle-East action laughs. Date Night follows a couple who go out for dinner and a movie, and then get mistaken as other people -- that leads to, one would assume, comic moments.As Eric pointed out when the news first hit last year that Steve Carell and Tina Fey joined the project -- it's getting directed by Cheaper by the Dozen helmer Shawn Levy, which doesn't bode well. But the cast certainly does. Fey and Carell are the couple, while Wahlberg will play a black ops man in private security who offers to help them. But there's more. James Franco somehow found time in his schedule to sign on and play a "dim con man," the Oscar-nominated Taraji P. Henson will play a cop who doesn't take things at face value, Common and Jimmi Simpson will play detectives on the take, Leighton Meester will play the couple's babysitter, and Kristen Wiig will play Fey's best friend.Could all of these names have signed on if this was going to be like other Levy features? Maybe he's ready to surprise us.