Lethal Weapon 5 has been a VERY long time coming. And unfortunately, the delays only got worse after the tragic passing of director Richard Donner. But there’s now another reason why the action-comedy is being held up, and that’s the recent Warner Bros. Discovery deal.
Mel Gibson, who has long been eager to return as Martin Riggs, told IndieWire that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s overall strategy for the studio, in particular his plans for HBO Max, have added some new hurdles…
“The only delay is now with all the shake-up at Warners, with Discovery coming in and the new boss [Zaslav]. 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.”
Last year, we learned Gibson was in talks to direct Lethal Weapon 5 himself. And it’s clear that Gibson, working with screenwriter Richard Wenk, wants to make a movie that would make Donner proud…
“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.”
It’s been 24 years since Lethal Weapon 4, but with legacy sequels still very much a popular thing (see the recent Scream), now’s as good a time as any for Riggs and Murtaugh to take on one last case.
