We were only saying yesterday how Mel Gibson has decided he’s now officially allowed back into the limelight following his anti-semetic arrest debacle in 2006. Now, not only has he announced plans to film a Viking drama starring Leo DiCaprio next autumn, but he’s also letting it be known that he’ll be writing and starring in, but not directing, the action drama, How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
News of Gibson making some sort of Mexico-set flick surfaced a couple of weeks ago, with reports that Veracruz Gov. Fidel Herrera had announced that part of the Ignacio Allende prison would be emptied in January “because a grand production will be filmed there with our friend, the actor and producer Mel Gibson.”
However at the time no one knew what the film was, although it didn’t seem that surprising as Gibson filmed Apocalypto in Veracruz. Indeed much of the same crew will be used for Summer Vacation as for Apocalypto, with the biggest change being that Gibson is passing the directing torch to his protege, Adrian Grunberg, who was his First AD on the earlier movie.
According to Variety, the new film is about, “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.” Why there’s a 9-year-old kid in prison, we don’t know, but as long as he’s not Jewish, Gibson probably won’t mind. Filming is due to begin next month.