Mel Gibson turns down LETHAL WEAPON 5

Richard Donner, director of all four LETHAL WEAPON movies has told L.A. Times that Mel Gibson has passed on the fifth movie which producer Joel Silver has recently put into development at Warner Bros. after being extremely impressed by Shane Black's script. Donner also believes the project is now dead, because no Gibson means no franchise.

"It's too bad, actually, because Channing Gibson, who wrote the fourth one, and Mike Riva, a designer on three of them, and myself and Derek had an incredibly strong story for the fifth movie. But we weren't given the opportunity and I think maybe I could have convinced Mel to do it. But Warners chose to go with Joel Silver." "Yes, the project is pretty much dead in the water unless someone had the sense to come to me."

Seems like this was a pack of falling cards for Warner Bros. When they couldn't get Donner involved in some capacity then they probably lost Gibson, their star. No Gibson, means no movie.. with or without Danny Glover. A real shame if you ask me because I was strangely interested in seeing more adventures of Riggs and Murtaugh, they aren't like some of the action heroes whose age would water down their character and with a script from Black getting big buzz at WB, I begin to feel like we might have missed out on something here.