'Lethal Weapon 5' Still on Life-Support

Monday

10Nov2008

'Lethal Weapon 5' Still on Life-Support

Monday, November 10, 2008 at 5:20PM

I'm neither for nor against a Lethal Weapon 5. On the one hand, it's a fifth movie in a franchise, and there's really no point to that. Like, ever. On the other hand, as I've said before, if they come at it completely fresh, like it's the first sequel instead of the fourth, the characters of Riggs and Murtaugh might have a little life. Imagine how much crazy we'd buy out of Mel Gibson now.

It was bandied about - one of my favorite phrases - and then Richard Donner, who directed the first four flicks, said Mel wasn't interested. But apparently, what he meant was that Mel wasn't currently interested. Here's the revisionist history:

"We talked about it, but it was something that Mel didn't want to do now," explained Silver. "It doesn't mean that he doesn't want to do it ever, but as of right now, he doesn't."

Silver also tells IGN that the idea for the fifth one was fairly solid. Of course, he made movies out of the third and fourth ones, too, so, take that into consideration. "If we can do it, it would be fun," promised the director. "Shane Black had a great take on it, a great idea, a great feeling about it. He did a really complex kind of treatment or outline, very complicated, very good."

"The idea that they wanted to get it up right away, we couldn't do that, but we'll see what happens."

So consider it on the back burner and maybe not in the deep freeze. I'm not terribly encouraged by the description of Gibson's state of mind, and it's kind of like what one of my good friends always says about dating - when she says she doesn't want a relationship, she just doesn't want a relationship with you.

But having Shane Black in the mix is the only way to go from here. I'm not sure it can work either way, but it can't work without him.

Colin Boyd |

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