Is Lethal Weapon 5 on the way?

Could Mel Gibson and Danny Glover be reuniting for one last Lethal Weapon movie?

Simon Brew

According to reports circling today, the latest seemingly-dead franchise to be jolted back into life could well be Lethal Weapon, which ended with the soft-but-reasonably-funny fourth instalment (Mel Gibson beating Jet Li in a fight? Hmmm) at the end of the last decade.

Yet with other 80s-initiated franchises, such as Terminator, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop and Robocop all attracting the chequebooks of the movie studios, the latest word is that Lethal Weapon may get a fifth film to round off the franchise. According to a report at Digital Spy, this would involve Danny Glover’s Murtaugh coming out of retirement – he is too old for this shit, after all – while Mel Gibson (who urgently needs to find a way to give himself an acting career again) as Riggs would be on the verge of quitting the force himself. Naturally, the pair would combine to solve one last case. Again.

This is all rumour thus far, but the most intriguing element to it is the potential return of Shane Black to scribing duties. Black wrote the first film, and more recently wrote and directed the terrific Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. There’s no word whether he’d be interested in directing as well, given that Richard Donner has helmed all four of the films to date.

Nobody is going on the record about the project thus far, and the earliest we’d be likely to see it would be 2010. Blimey.

08/08/08

Lethal Weapon

Could we be seeing another in the franchise soon?