A fresh report suggests that the long-gestating buddy cop sequel Lethal Weapon 5 will shoot next year, with Mel Gibson in the director’s chair.
We know that a fifth entry in the Lethal Weapon series has been in the works for a long time. The late, great Richard Donner – director of the first four films – was working on it before he passed away in 2021. Then, in the same year we heard that Mel Gibson, one half of the series’ leading duo was set to take over the directorial reins. Of course, a lot has happened in the world since 2021, with a lot of that turbulence directly affecting Hollywood film production. However, despite all of the uncertainty, Hollywood insider Daniel Richtman (via World of Reel) is reporting that Lethal Weapon 5 will shoot next year.
According to the report, Jez Butterworth, the writer behind Edge Of Tomorrow and Le Mans 66 (known as Ford Vs Ferrari everywhere else) has penned the latest script based on Donner’s original idea for the film. Warner Bros are behind the project and Danny Glover is set to reprise his role as the long-suffering Roger Murtaugh alongside Gibson’s Martin Riggs.
Should this report prove to be accurate, where this leaves Gibson’s other long-gestating directorial project, The Passion Of The Christ 2, we don’t know. That project is currently going under the title of Resurrection and was said to be ‘on the eve of production’ back in February of this year. Of course, the actors’ strike may well have thrown a spanner into the works there, but given how long we’ve heard talk of follow-up films to both Lethal Weapon and The Passion Of The Christ, the thought that both could suddenly film in the space of a calendar year seems unlikely.
It will be at least 20 years since the release of The Passion Of The Christ and even more since we last saw a new Lethal Weapon movie on our screens. The question of whether the world has moved on in that time remains to be answered. Whether either of these Mel Gibson-directed films will actually happen in 2024 is perhaps a more pressing question, but Gibson does have a film (probably) due out in 2024 – that being Flight Risk, a project headlined by Mark Wahlberg that is (probably) due to release year.
