Exclusive: ‘Pain & Gain’ trailer shows Mark Wahlberg bigger than ever

Mark Wahlberg is going from the biggest hit of his career to the biggest he’s ever been.

In the new trailer for “Pain & Gain” -- premiering exclusively right here on Yahoo! Movies -- Wahlberg shows off his radically transformed body as a personal trainer turned extortionist. Based on a true story, the role required the 41-year-old Wahlberg to pack on a lot of muscle in a short amount of time. And he ended up getting bigger than he’d ever been before (even surpassing his old Calvin Klein underwear-modeling days).

Walhberg told Men’s Fitness that he had two months to shape up for “Pain & Gain.” Making it even more difficult was the fact that he had slimmed down to play more of an Average Joe in “Ted,” which became the highest-grossing film of his career this past summer. To do it, he had to pump a lot of iron and down a lot of food.

[Photos: See Mark Wahlberg in the poster for 'Pain & Gain']

Wahlberg revealed to E! Online that he ate up to 10 meals a day to load up on calories. He said it involved “a lot of getting up at 2 in the morning to eat another meal and I was still full from the meal at 10 o'clock." Wahlberg even started his own line of protein shakes and supplements called “Marked,” with a portion of the proceeds going to his charitable foundation for inner city youths.

Of course, it wasn’t just eating that got him to look like that. He spent two months intensively training before shooting. Then once filming began, he’d work 12-hour days on set, crash early, and be up again at 4 a.m. to hit the gym. All told, he put on 40 pounds, from his trim “Ted” weight of 165 to a hulking 205.

Wahlberg needed to be as big as possible, though, to share the screen with Dwayne Johnson, who plays another bodybuilder drawn into an extortion scheme that goes very bad. “Pain & Gain” is a bit of a change of pace for director Michael Bay, who has been developing the true story for years. Wahlberg, Johnson and Bay all reportedly took massive pay cuts to get the modestly budgeted picture made (at an estimated $22 million, this cost about 10% of the budget for Bay’s last film, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”).

[Related: Dwayne Johnson introduces the 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' trailer]

Apparently, Bay and Wahlberg got along so well that the actor signed on for “Transformers 4,” which will start shooting in the spring. No word yet on just how much he’ll have to eat for that one.

“Pain & Gain” will open nationwide on April 26.