Although last year’s passing of legendary filmmaker Richard Donner seemed to put an end to any hopes of a Lethal Finale, Mel Gibson announced back in November that he’d be stepping in for his friend and colleague as director on the long-planned Lethal Weapon 5.
Things may have fallen quiet since then, but Gibson has now provided an update on the status of the sequel during an interview with Screen Rant, stating that the Warner Bros. Discovery merger has delayed things but the plan is to get cameras rolling early in 2023.
“It’s [coming along] great, 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,” said Gibson. “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,” Gibson continued. “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.”
SEE ALSO: Mel Gibson announces that he will direct Lethal Weapon 5
Should it happen, Lethal Weapon 5 will see the return of Gibson’s Martin Riggs and Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh, who’ll now certainly be far too old for this shit given that the character celebrated his 50th birthday in the original 1987 film.
