A little over two years ago we excitedly reported that Richard Donner was going to be directing Lethal Weapon 5 with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover returning as cops Riggs and Murtaugh (here) and we were very excited about the news… Lethal Weapon was a big cornerstone of our childhoods here at FTN, so we couldn’t wait to dive in again.
Since then, of course, we lost Donner and we thought that along with him, the dream of a fifth outing was gone too.
However, it seems that no, the series isn’t dead and Gibson has given an update on the script and when he reckons it might begin filming… and it’s sooner than we ever imagined.
“It’s [coming along] great,” he said when talking about the script, “we’ve got a really good screenplay that I developed. Well, Donner developed it, Richard Donner, of course, developed it with Richard Wenk, and they had a really good template.
“I had the honor of sitting down, after Richard passed away, with the writer and doing a couple more drafts and trying to do it in the spirit of what we thought Donner might [want], because I knew the guy so well. We tried to get that flavor, and we were pretty happy with what we came up with. The only delay is now with all the shake-up at Warners, with Discovery coming in and the new boss, and they chop everyone else up and throw them away and get new people.
It always takes time for these companies to regroup, so that’s been a delay, but I’m pretty confident we’ll get this one up on its feet, probably shoot it in the first quarter of the New Year.”
Yup, Gibson believes we could see the movie begin to film in the next few months!
This is great news and while we haven’t any details on the movie, we’d love to see Joe Pesci, Rene Russo and Chris Rock all back to finish off the story which we expect could become a passing of the torch adventure ala Ghostbusters: Afterlife. We’re not sure what to expect but as long as the magic is back, we’d be happy enough.
Thoughts?
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