A fifth installment in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise at Warner Bros. Pictures has long been in development, but never really seemed to take off until some time during the pandemic.
The franchise’s director Richard Donner passed away in Summer last year and had been preparing a script with “The Equalizer” films scribe Richard Wenk.
In the wake of Donner’s death, his producer wife Lauren Shuler Donner apparently helped convince Gibson to take over the director’s chair. Gibson, speaking at an event in London, revealed the news (via Screen Rant saying:
“[Richard] was developing the screenplay and he got pretty far along with it… They had a really good template. 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”
Gibson goes on to say the Warner Bros. Discovery merger has stalled the production a bit, with overall confusion in the company needing to be sorted out befor they can do much more:
“The only delay is now with all the shake-up at Warners, with Discovery coming in and the new boss [David Zaslav]. They chop everyone else up and throw them away and get new people. 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.”
Gibson’s original co-star Danny Glover is slated to return as Detective Roger Murtaugh, while Bob Jennings is also joining the cast. Dan Lin is set to produce.
