Mel Gibson

[Gold Trumpet]

This project sounds good because of the cheeky title. Implies that there might be something more than the standard drama. Maybe it could be a darker - action version of Paper Moon or something. And yes, I know he's not directing this, but didn't know where else to put this news.

Mel Gibson Takes A "Summer Vacation"
By Garth Franklin
Source: Dark Horizons


Mel Gibson will next star in the action drama "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" for his Icon Productions reports Variety.

Gibson also penned the script, his third after "The Passion of the Christ" and "Apocalypto", which centers on a career criminal who gets caught by Mexican authorities and is sent to a drug- and crime-filled prison where he learns how to survive with the help of a 9-year-old boy.

Various members of the "Apocalypto" crew will reassemble for the project which begins shooting in March in San Diego and Veracruz, Mexico.

The news comes right after the announcement that Gibson has committed to directing a viking-themed project starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Alexandro]

lol.

[MacGuffin]

Warner Bros. Backing Mel Gibson Movie About Jewish Icon
The actor-director will develop the project based on Judah Maccabee with "Basic Instinct" writer Joe Eszterhas.
Source: THR

Warner Bros. is joining forces with Mel Gibson to develop a movie about the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee, and Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has come aboard to write the screenplay. Gibson will produce through his Icon Productions and will decide whether he'll act in or direct the film once the script is completed.

Although Gibson was accused of anti-Semitism by a number of Jewish leaders when he released The Passion of the Christ in 2004, he's wanted to tackle a movie about Maccabee for more than a decade. Maccabbee, considered one of the great warriors in Jewish history, led a popular revolt against he Seleucid king Antiochus IV, seizing Jerusalem and reconsecrating the Temple, an event remembered by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

Eszterhas, who hit it big in the '80s with movies like Flashdance, Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct, before retreating from Hollywood in recent years, has been talking with Gibson for about a year and did a lot of his own research on the subject before embarking on a screenplay, according to once source familiar with the project.

There's no timetable in place at the moment, but once Ezterhas, repped by ICM, completes the script, Gibson will decide whether or not to act in the film and whether he'll direct it. Gibson's last film appearance was his star turn in Jodie Foster's The Beaver, which opened in May.

Whether the controversial actor's decision to take on a Jewish hero appeases his critics remains to be seen.

"The story that has always fired my imagination...is the Book of Maccabbees," Gibson told Sean Hannity in a WABC ratio interview in 2004 when he was promoting The Passion. "The Maccabbees family stood up, and they made war, they stuck by their guns, and they came out winning. It's like a Western," he explained.

Certainly, the tale of the Maccabees could lend itself to the kind of harsh realism that Gibson employed in The Passion and Apocalypto. The Maccabees were a fierce group of guerilla warriors who revolted against the Seleucid Empire and its ruler, who had forbidden Jewish religious practices. Some consider the Maccabees to have been zealots; their revolt started with the murder of a Jew who practiced Hellenism. After the Maccabees wrested control of Judea from the Syrean Greeks, they set out to purify the land. After rededicating the Temple --the story of the festival of Hanukkah is born out of the legend that a small jug of oil sustained the Temple's Menorah for a miraculous eight days --the Maccabees ruled with an iron fist. They compelled observance of religious laws, circumcised newborns and killed apostates.

In 2004, though, Gibson's critics objected to his making such a movie. The Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman told the Orlando Sentinel, that if Gibson made that movie, "We'll lose. He'll write his own history. I would prefer to leave the fate of Jewish history and Hollywood to Steven Spielberg. The Maccabees...are our sacred history.

[polkablues]

Everything about this screams debacle, and for that reason, I am hugely supportive of it.

[Jeremy Blackman]

"The Maccabbees family stood up, and they made war..."

Because they're Jews, right?

[Reel]

Patton Oswalt Tweet:

"First word Mel Gibson says in THE ROAD WARRIOR: "Booby." Last word he says: "Bullet." Whole history of cinema, right there."

[MacGuffin]

Mel Gibson, Joe Eszterhas Spar Over 'Maccabees' Movie
Studio Scraps Script


Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas said in a letter to Mel Gibson that the actor and filmmaker "hates Jews" after Warner Bros. rejected Eszterhas' screenplay for Gibson's movie about Judah Maccabee.

The letter, published on The Wrap.com, accuses Gibson of not really wanting to make the film, and sabotaging it, saying: "I've come to the conclusion that the reason you won't make 'The Maccabees' is the ugliest possible one. You hate Jews."

Eszterhas wrote that Gibson only wanted to make the movie so he could "convert the Jews to Christianity."

Warner Bros. announced Wednesday that it would not go forward with Eszterhas' script and was "analyzing what to do with the project," according to The Wrap.

Gibson wrote a response to Eszterhas, published in the Los Angeles Times, in which he said that Eszterhas' script was delivered late and that the draft was "substandard" and a "significant waste of time."

"Contrary to your assertion that I was only developing "Maccabees" to burnish my tarnished reputation, I have been working on this project for over 10 years and it was publicly announced 8 years ago. I absolutely want to make this movie; it's just that neither Warner Brothers nor I want to make this movie based on your script," Gibson wrote.

Jewish groups criticized Gibson's involvement in a film on the life of Judah Maccabee when he inked a production deal with Warner Bros. Studio for the movie project in September 2011.

Gibson's 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" angered many in the Jewish community who felt that it played into notions of Jewish culpability for the killing of Jesus. Later he landed in hot water after spewing anti-Semitic invective during a drunken confrontation with a police officer.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Wrap Wednesday that he was pleased that the project is stalled. "Jewish history will be better off without Mel Gibson playing Judah Maccabee," he told The Wrap.