Max Payne has finally ventured from the video game screen to the silver screen.

The film, starring Mark Wahlberg, Ludacris and Mila Kunis will be in theaters this Friday.

“Max Payne,” directed by John Moore, is based on the 2001 third-person shooter with the same name. In the film, Max Payne (Wahlberg) is a DEA agent whose family was murdered due to a conspiracy led by an assassin. Mona Sax (Kunis) is out to avenge her sister’s death.

The two are continually followed throughout New York City by the mob and police, and hot on their trail is detective Jim Bravura (Ludacris).

Recently, the Northern Star had an opportunity to discuss the film with the three cast members.

From the beginning, Wahlberg felt comfortable with the role.

“I’d been looking to do something with some action, some energy, some intensity,” he said. “After doing ‘The Lovely Bones’ and M. Night [Shyamalan]’s movie ‘The Happening,’ I definitely wanted to do something where I could really kinda go off. I read the script before I realized it was based on a video game, and I just thought it was a nice fit for me.”

Wahlberg also wanted to stay faithful to the film’s inspiration and connect the video game players to the movie.

“First and foremost, we wanted to satisfy the diehard game fans,” Wahlberg said. “Hopefully it will draw a lot of other people to the film based on the images that they see in the spots, and, you know, maybe they’ll go and watch and play the game after. I’d love them to watch the movie before they play the game.”

The subject of much discussion with Wahlberg is the recent “Saturday Night Live” sketch titled “Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals,” a sketch in which Andy Samberg poked fun at Wahlberg’s vocal inflections. Wahlberg said the sketch was a jab for not accepting an invitation to host the comedy show.

“It’s not really my thing, and I don’t want to go do any buffoonery,” Wahlberg said. “Especially buffoonery for free. I like ‘Mad TV’ better.”

Within the film, rapper Ludacris plays a cop, which is what drew him to the movie.

“This is the exact reason why I choose roles like that – to get away from the persona of Ludacris. Ludacris is a character all within itself,” the rapper said. “So I’m just trying to not only surprise myself but surprise everyone else and continue to choose these diverse roles that let you know that I obviously must be acting, because it’s nothing like what the persona of Ludacris is.”

With two films coming out this year, along with the release of his sixth album “Theater of the Mind,” Ludacris has to juggle both demanding careers at once.

“I focus on one at a time, but luckily, when you shoot movies, it takes them almost a year to turn them around,” he said. “When you’re doing music, you can do that and put it right out.”

Mila Kunis, star of “That ’70s Show” and voice of Meg on “Family Guy,” discussed her shift from comedy to drama.

“It’s one of those things where when you get the opportunity to do a movie like this, you jump at the chance,” Kunis said. “It’s not like I did ‘[Forgetting] Sarah Marshall’ and thus made a conscious decision to be ‘Oh, the next film I do is going to be an action movie starring Ludacris and Mark Wahlberg.’ It doesn’t quite work that way.”