It’s been 30 years since Mel Gibson and Danny Glover last starred in a Lethal Weapon film – but, according to Gibson, the next instalment in the franchise is the best one yet.
The fifth film in the action film series has been in development hell for years, but Gibson is set to direct it to fulfil what he said was a dying wish of original filmmaker Richard Donner.
Now, in a new interview, Gibson has boldly claimed that the film’s screenplay, from Richard Wenck, is “better than all the others”.
He told Collider at Fan Expo Boston that while “there were good things about each one”, he thinks the films “tend to get diluted” – and that when he and Wenck united to conceive the fifth instalment, they thought: “What would Donner do?”
“That’s what we were thinking in the room,” he said, adding that the Superman and Goonies filmmaker told him shortly before his 2021 death, aged 90: “Hey kid, if I drop off the perch, you’ll take this over, won’t you?”
The Lethal Weapon franchise follows two mismatched LAPD detectives – Martin Riggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Glover). The first film, released in 1987, was written by Shane Black, with Jeffrey Boam writing the 1989 sequel.
Boam returned to write the third sequel, released in 1992, alongside Robert Mark Kamen, with Channing Gibson writing 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4.
Gibson suggested that the new film is more character-driven, revealing that one of the lead characters is retired, with another on a desk job – and said that he expects Glover to return.
“It doesn’t get into the big explosions and all this sort of stuff. But it still has the energy and, I think, drive of a big action film,” he said, adding: “It still has all the elements of what was in the other films, but not nearly so complicated. But it deals more about the people in it.”
Gibson blamed the film’s delay on the Warner Bros Discovery merger, which is set to see Paramount acquire the studio in a deal worth $81bn.
The actor-director, who has also made films, including The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge, has been at the centre of controversy over the years.
He was arrested for suspected drunk driving in 2006, following which he made antisemitic remarks to a policeman. The US actor later apologised, stating that the comments were “blurted out in a moment of insanity”.
Four years later, he featured on a leaked recording with then-wife Oksana Grigorieva in which he uttered a racial slur.
Gibson was blacklisted from Hollywood, but returned in 2017 to direct his Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards in 2018, with Gibson picking up a nomination for Best Director.
