Wahlberg, 53, tells PEOPLE that he and filmmaker Gibson, 68, completed production on the upcoming thriller Flight Risk, co-starring Topher Grace and Michelle Dockery, in just 22 days.
"He knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it, but he was also open to collaborating," the actor says of working with Gibson, whose last film, 2016's Hacksaw Ridge, received two Academy Awards and several more nominations.
"Again, to be shooting 15, 20 pages a day, something that I had never done before. I've shot down 'n dirty, but, like 30 days was the fastest I'd ever done a film," Wahlberg adds of the experience. "This was in 20 or 22 days."
Flight Risk stars Downton Abbey's Dockery, 42, as a U.S. Marshal transporting a prisoner (Grace, 45) on a small flight across Alaska en route to New York City for the prisoner to testify in an upcoming trial against an organized crime group. Wahlberg plays the pair's pilot on the three-person plane. As the newly-released trailer shows, the federal agent realizes early in their flight that Wahlberg's character is actually a hit man sent to kill her passenger.
Wahlberg has worked with Gibson before, but only as actors in front of the camera in movies like 2022's Father Stu and 2017's Daddy's Home 2.
"Having seen Apocalypto a million times and Braveheart and every other film that he's directed, he's such a talented filmmaker," Wahlberg tells PEOPLE of deciding to act in Gibson's movie. "It was one of those things where, between the part and to getting to work with the filmmaker, for me it's always top of the list: the script, the director and the part are the three main components when making a choice,"
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"So for me, I've always just tried to work with the best," he adds.
Wahlberg additionally tells PEOPLE that he and Gibson had discussed a few different ideas for projects together while making Father Stu and Daddy's Home and that he "responded right away" when Gibson sent him the script for Flight Risk.
Much of the upcoming movie takes place during the group's fraught flight over Alaska, leaving Wahlberg in close quarters with Grace and Dockery, whom he says he met for the first time while making Flight Risk.
"So it was a bit claustrophobic, but I thought it certainly ramps up the tension right away, everybody being such close proximity," he says.