Mark Wahlberg has quietly ascended to become one of the most bankable stars in the streaming age, with major platforms now leaning on his recognizable presence to drive global viewership. Since 2020, Wahlberg has headlined seven streaming films across Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Paramount+. According to Forbes, he earns an estimated $20 million to $25 million per streaming project and is projected to have made roughly $60 million in 2025 alone, a total that would place him among the world’s highest-paid actors.

Riz Ahmed, by contrast, has carved his reputation from a multi-disciplinary artistic trajectory that spans underground music and bold acting work. 

So what happens when streaming’s most commercially dominant star meets one of its most critically respected performers? Netflix is about to find out.

Mark Wahlberg and Riz Ahmed are set to lead Netflix’s gritty crime thriller The Big Fix, with director Baltasar Kormákur attached to helm the project. The film is being developed by Netflix and Chernin Entertainment, marking another collaboration between Wahlberg and Kormákur after Contraband and Two Guns. The screenplay is penned by Guy Bolton and Justin Haythe, with Kormákur producing alongside Peter Chernin and David Ready.

The project gained momentum as Netflix looked ahead to Kormákur’s next move following Apex, the Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton led survival thriller positioned as one of the platform’s flagship releases for the first half of 2026. The Big Fix, as reported by Deadline, has been a long-priority project dating back to earlier development efforts under 20th Century Fox. 

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Beyond the names and the power players behind the camera, the core story promises a thematic deep dive into corruption, morality, and the global stakes of sport and crime.

The Big Fix is inspired on real life events and centers on a former Interpol officer Chris Eaton, played by Mark Wahlberg who has been sidelined into a bureaucratic role at FIFA. When he uncovers a sprawling international match-fixing operation, he embarks on a dangerous mission to dismantle it, pulling him into a morally complex, high-stakes heist of truth and justice.

Standing in his way is a relentless hustler, Raj Perumal, i.e Riz Ahmed, who is allied with Chinese Triads, rigging football matches worldwide for enormous profit. It reflects a shadow economy where outcomes are manipulated, millions are at stake, and no one plays fair. As the investigation intensifies, the decades-old rivalry between law, order, and criminal ingenuity escalates into a globe-trotting cat-and-mouse thriller, pitting two driven men against one another.

In pairing Wahlberg’s blockbuster draw with Ahmed’s dramatic depth, The Big Fix could become one of streaming’s most talked-about thrillers this year.      

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What do you think? Will this unlikely duo deliver the next great Netflix crime story? Share your thoughts below.