Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' was a masterpiece of a mob movie. Led by an all-star cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, it went on to win four Academy Awards.

The film was a huge success, grossing over $290 million at the box office. It appeared as number one on many critic's top ten lists of 2006. Things looked perfectly ripe for a sequel. But the pitch didn't go too well according to Wahlberg, who was talking on KFC Radio.

"I went into a meeting with [screenwriter] Bill Monahan at Warner Bros. to pitch the sequel to 'The Departed,'" Wahlberg said. "And let’s just say the pitch didn't go very well. He really didn't have anything fleshed out. But he's the kind of guy you just trust to go and write something. So when we were working on the script for 'Cocaine Cowboys' and 'American Desperado' I said, 'Bill, just go write. They like to have things well thought out and planned.' It’d be a pretty good one."

While Wahlberg didn't go into any plot details about the sequel, he did say that Monahan wanted to focus on Wahlberg's character. He also had Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro in mind for starring roles. Two actors that would fit in so well, you would could almost convince yourself they were in the first film.

"My idea actually is to set the film before, during and after the action of the first film, which I think would be extraordinary," Monahan said in a 2011 interview with /Film. "Essentially, in the middle section of the thing I've intended, you'd see actions that take place during the original 'Departed' but aren’t on screen. There would be off-screen things that occur at that point in the story. But it would work seamlessly as a movie of its own."

Monahan, who recently wrote the screenplay for Ben Affleck's 'The Tender Bar', admitted that the lack of a synopses was what failed to take the sequel off the ground. "I don’t do synopses and I don’t pitch," the screenwriter said. "Personally, I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen."

Back in 2016, producer Roy Lee mentioned that while Monahan had an "amazing idea" for a sequel, ultimately Scorsese wasn't interested in doing a second film.