EXCLUSIVE: Mel Gibson, 70, Panics Fans With Action Comeback Vow Aaron Tinney Sun, August 16, 2026 at 4:14 PM UTC 0 Mel Gibson still wants to make another 'Lethal Weapon' movie.MEGA Mel Gibson has sparked fears he may be too old for another fullthrottle action comeback after vowing to resurrect Lethal Weapon at 70 – insisting the longdelayed fifth installment can still deliver the energy of a major action movie. RadarOnline.
EXCLUSIVE: Mel Gibson, 70, Panics Fans With Action Comeback Vow
Aaron Tinney Sun, August 16, 2026 at 4:14 PM UTC
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Mel Gibson still wants to make another 'Lethal Weapon' movie.MEGA
Mel Gibson has sparked fears he may be too old for another full-throttle action comeback after vowing to resurrect Lethal Weapon at 70 – insisting the long-delayed fifth installment can still deliver the energy of a major action movie.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the Hollywood veteran remains committed to Lethal Weapon 5, revealing that he and screenwriter Richard Wenk completed a script after original franchise director Richard Donner died aged 91 in 2021.
Mel Gibson's 'Lethal Weapon 5' Role
Gibson has vowed to resurrect the 'Lethal Weapon' franchise.MEGA
Gibson, who plays volatile LAPD officer Martin Riggs in the buddy cop franchise, could also direct the movie, which would bring back an older Riggs alongside Danny Glover's Roger Murtaugh.
A source close to the project exclusively told Radar: "There are fans who would love to see Mel back as Riggs, but there are also fears that at 70 he is simply too old to throw himself back into the kind of action that made Lethal Weapon famous. Nobody wants him getting hurt trying to prove he can still do what he did decades ago."
And a Hollywood production insider warned: "The concern is whether audiences really want to see Mel doing action at this age. The plan is clearly to acknowledge that these characters are older rather than pretend time has stood still, but it is easy for a man of his age to get injured trying to do action."
'Lethal Weapon 5' Faces Production Trouble
Gibson finished the screenplay with writer Richard Wenk.MEGA
Speaking to Collider, Gibson said about Lethal Weapon 5: "Donner realised it. I think he did all of those films, and sadly he's passed away. But he sort of knew what he had, and Shane Black wrote a good script.
"It was timely, you know. It was '80s. We were used to these tough guys on film who kind of had it all together, but they were tough and two-dimensional in a lot of ways.
"So this one was better because the main protagonists in the story both had kind of vulnerabilities, and one was crazy, and the other was scared, and it went a little deeper than the usual action flick."
Gibson, also famed for Mad Max and his Oscar-winning Braveheart, admitted the fifth film in the Lethal Weapon series remains trapped in "industrial film h---" despite the completed screenplay.
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He said: "There were good things about each one, but as you say, they tend to get diluted out there a lot.
"And, you know, Donner, when he was 90 years old, was working on the fifth, and of course he passed away in the middle. So I got together with the writer, and we completed it thinking, 'What would Donner do?'
"That's what we were thinking in the room, and I think that the fifth script is better than all the others. But it's tied up in some kind of industrial film h-ll that you can't extract it from to make it."
'Lethal Weapon' Characters Face Low-Tech Reality
Danny Glover played Gibson's onscreen partner Roger Murtaugh.MEGA
Gibson also said the story would recognize that Riggs and Murtaugh have aged rather than attempting to recreate their younger characters.
He added: "The characters are quite different. They're older. One's retired. The other one's on a desk job. He's putting on too much weight, and it's low-tech. It doesn't get into the big explosions and all this sort of stuff.
"But it still has the energy and, I think, drive of a big action film. Like, let's say, for instance, Apocalypto."
Gibson revealed the project remained trapped in development hell.MEGA
Gibson also revealed Donner personally asked him to take control of the franchise if he died.
"Donner, God rest his soul, he said to me in this deep voice, he said, 'Hey kid, if I drop off the perch, you'll take this over, won't you?'" Gibson recalled.
"I said, 'Shut up! You're not going anywhere.' And of course he did."
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: August 16, 2026 at 12:36PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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