Mel Gibson Says 'Lethal Weapon 5' Script Is Finished — But Stuck in Corporate Limbo

Mel Gibson says the script for Lethal Weapon 5 is done, and he calls it the best in the franchise. The film, though, is going nowhere fast.

Speaking to Collider at Fan Expo Boston on a Sunday, Gibson described the project as "tied up in some kind of industrial film hell that you can't extract it from to make it," according to Variety.

Gibson, now 70, co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Wenk after the death of franchise director Richard Donner in July 2021 at age 91. Donner helmed all four previous Lethal Weapon films, which began in 1987 and paired Gibson's Martin Riggs with Danny Glover's Roger Murtaugh. Gibson said the script was written with a simple guiding question: "What would Donner do?" He told Collider it is better than every other script in the series.

The plan was to move quickly. Gibson said the film was set to go into production once the script was finished, but "it just never got the wheels under it," as Deadline reported. Variety first confirmed in November 2021 that Gibson would direct and Wenk was writing the draft.

The hold-up, according to Gibson, is corporate. Warner Bros., the studio behind the Lethal Weapon franchise, is caught in the middle of David Ellison's Paramount Skydance acquisition — a deal that would fold one of Hollywood's legacy studios into a new ownership structure. Gibson told Collider he thinks the fifth film could move forward once that takeover of Warner Bros. is complete. Representatives for Warner Bros. Discovery did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Variety reported.

Gibson also offered a sense of what the script actually looks like. The lead characters are older — one retired, the other parked behind a desk. He said it does not lean on big explosions but keeps the energy and drive of a full-scale action film.

His intention is to direct the film himself, which he said was Donner's wish. Gibson's directing credits include Braveheart, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1996, and Hacksaw Ridge, which earned six Oscar nominations in 2017.

For fans of the franchise, the good news is that the script exists, has Gibson's full commitment, and carries what he calls Donner's creative spirit. The bad news is that a corporate acquisition — not creative disagreement, not budget disputes — is the wall between page and screen. How long that wall stays up depends on the timeline of a deal that is still working its way through the machinery.