Mel Gibson confirms ‘Lethal Weapon 5’ in the works

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Mel Gibson and Danny Glover aren’t too old for this s—!

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Speaking on the Inspire Me podcast, Gibson, 68, has confirmed that he will direct and star in a fifth — and presumably final — Lethal Weapon movie.

“I’m going to direct the fifth film in the Lethal Weapon series,” Gibson said. “You know, Richard Donner, who did the other four, sadly passed away and he was a good friend. He kind of tasked me with carrying the flag home on this one so it’ll be an honour for me to do that.”

More than a quarter century after the fourth movie hit theatres in the summer of 1998, Gibson says the new entry will be “pretty serious” as it follows Los Angeles police officers Roger Murtaugh (Glover) and Martin Riggs (Gibson). 

“He had gotten a fair way into writing the screenplay and we’ve used what was there. We kept kind of poking at it, working it and I’m pretty happy with it, it’s good, I had a lot of fun doing it,” he said.

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“(The film is) funny, but it’s pretty serious too. It tackles a couple of hard issues. I’m looking forward to it,” he added.

The original Lethal Weapon was released in 1987, with three sequels hitting the big screen between 1989 and 1998.

Talk of a sequel had been brewing for years with Donner even giving the film a name in 2018. “I’m ready to do 5. It’s called Lethal Finale,” the director said in a February 2018 interview. “It is dark, but I wanted to end it on an emotional note … It’s heartbreaking.”

Work on a fifth film was confirmed in 2020 with Donner saying it would be “the final one.”

“It’s both my privilege and duty to put it to bed… It’s the last one, I’ll promise you that,” Donner told The Daily Telegraph.

After Donner died the following summer, Gibson said he had been tasked with completing the film on his own.

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“(Donner) was developing the screenplay and he got pretty far along with it. And he said to me one day, ‘Listen kid, if I kick the bucket you will do it.’ And I said: ‘Shut up,’” Gibson told Britain’s The Sun in 2021.

“But he did indeed pass away. But he did ask me to do it and at the time I didn’t say anything. He said it to his wife and to the studio and the producer. So I will be directing the fifth one.”

The film’s original writer, Shane Black, confirmed to Postmedia in a 2016 interview that he had written a treatment for a fifth film that would have sent Riggs and Murtaugh to New York City.

“There was a 62-page treatment,” Black told Postmedia in an interview. “Essentially, it was a script then, because the dialogue was in there for Lethal Weapon: Part 5. And it was quite good, I thought!”

The plot, Black said, would have seen Gibson and Glover’s characters transplanted from L.A. to New York City “during the worst blizzard on the East Coast in recent memory.”

In the midst of the storm, detectives Riggs and Murtaugh would end up taking on private contractors involved in an elaborate criminal smuggling scheme connected to Afghanistan and Iraq. “It was just a very visceral and powerful story,” Black said.

Gibson said no and that ended the movie’s prospects. “The thing is, it’s every bit his right to say no. He’s a wonderful actor,” Black said at the time.

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