The fourth and last ‘Lethal Weapon’ came out in 1998, and despite rumors over the years, Richard Donner never managed to get a fifth film made. Now, Mel Gibson is looking to both star in and direct the next sequel as a way to honor Donner’s legacy.
The actor is also working on a follow-up to ‘The Passion of the Christ’ but is unsure which project will arrive first. “I don’t know, and that’s the funny thing,” Gibson recently told ComicBook.
He continued, “I mean, there’s various obstacles to getting any film up on its feet, and not just budgetary, but there’s like, there’s 1,000,001 reasons why something goes and why it doesn’t. So, it’s really kind of a crapshoot at this point what goes first and which came first, whether it’s the chicken or the egg.”
Released in 2004, ‘The Passion of the Christ’ made over $600 million at the box office and held the record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie in the U.S. until ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ It’s unclear how a sequel would work with the cast now two decades older, especially as it focuses on the resurrection of Jesus.
Another issue is how ‘Lethal Weapon 5’ will get off the ground, as Warner Bros. currently holds the rights to the franchise and Mel Gibson is still a controversial name in Hollywood.
Gibson’s career ran off the track after he made anti-Semitic comments during a drunken traffic stop in mid-2000s. A series of personal scandals followed, including a leaked recording of him making racist remarks to his then-girlfriend.
After years out of the spotlight, the actor only recently returned to the mainstream media with a role in the ‘John Wick’ spinoff series ‘The Continental.’
