Mel Gibson says his Wild Bunch remake “was a bad idea at first”

While some might say it still is, Mel Gibson has revealed during an interview with Deadline that he thought his recently-announced remake of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch was ” bad idea at first”, before he found his own take on the classic 1969 western.

“I thought it was a bad idea at first,” said Gibson, who was speaking at a Q&A following a screening of his new film Dragged Across Concrete.. “Why make The Wild Bunch again? Who would do that? I thought about it and I thought about it some more, and then I thought of a way [into the story]. A way to tell the story. So I’ve been sitting in a room with a writer and it’s been a blast. So it started as a bad idea, but it’s heading toward something that could be special. It’s about last chances and guys with lives of accrued violence. … Those guys [in the original film]? They laugh a lot, but it isn’t funny. “

Gibson is set to direct The Wild Bunch, as well as penning the script for the remake with Bryan Bagby. The actor and filmmaker has a number of other projects on his directing slate including World War II film Destroyer, the long-gestating Viking epic Berserker and biblical sequel The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, but it’s though that The Wild Bunch will now take priority.