'Lethal Weapon 5' Is "Dead in the Water"

Perhaps we should have analyzed the words of Columbus Short more carefully. Wow, I think I'm the first person to ever use that sentence.Last week, Short commented on rumors that he might be cast in Lethal Weapon 5. He said that producer Joel Silver had contacted him about joining a cast that would naturally include Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. But now the entire project sounds doomed, thanks to Richard Donner.Donner directed all four of the previous Weapon flicks, and he tells the Los Angeles Times, "Mel turned it down."You and I both know that without Gibson, it ain't Lethal Weapon, especially since we would buy Riggs' craziness a hell of a lot more now than five years ago, thanks to Gibson's outbursts."I would like to think that Mel turned it down because I wasn't involved," added Donner. "Knowing Mel, I would like to think that. Would that be the kind of thing he does? It sure would be."So where did it all fall apart? Donner says that Warner Bros. went with the Joel Silver-backed idea that featured a Shane Black script. Black wrote the original, so I would think that would be a good way to go. Donner says he had a different idea for the fifth film and that Warner Bros. simply chose Silver over him."Yes, the project is pretty much dead in the water unless someone had the sense to come to me," Donner notes. It's probably for the best that they stop after four, but depending on how they would handle the fifth film, it could have (or could have had) some merit, just like Rocky Balboa. But as The Times points out, Gibson is not exactly doing the buddy-cop movies anymore, so this may have been a bit of a long shot the whole time.