Lethal Weapon is an American buddy cop action-comedy media franchise created by Shane Black. It focuses on two Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detectives, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh.

The franchise consists of a series of four films released between 1987 and 1998 and a television series which aired from 2016 to 2019. The four films were directed by Richard Donner and also share many of the same core cast members, while the television series is a reboot with different actors.

Although the first film was not explicitly a comedy, the later films and the television series gradually became comedic in nature.A proposed fifth Lethal Weapon film had been in talks and development since 2007, but has yet to make it into production.

In September of 2022, director Mel Gibson expressed confidence that the film would begin shooting in the early months of 2023, and will most likely see a release date the same year.

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Dynatic Films is the #1 destination for all movie fans to catch the latest movie news, breakdowns as well as exclusive movie secrets & more!A fresh report suggests that the long-gestating buddy cop sequel Lethal Weapon 5 will shoot next year, with Mel Gibson in the director’s chair.

We know that a fifth entry in the Lethal Weapon series has been in the works for a long time. The late, great Richard Donner – director of the first four films – was working on it before he passed away in 2021. Then, in the same year we heard that Mel Gibson, one half of the series’ leading duo was set to take over the directorial reins. Of course, a lot has happened in the world since 2021, with a lot of that turbulence directly affecting Hollywood film production. However, despite all of the uncertainty, Hollywood insider Daniel Richtman (via World of Reel) is reporting that Lethal Weapon 5 will shoot next year.

According to the report, Jez Butterworth, the writer behind Edge Of Tomorrow and Le Mans 66 (known as Ford Vs Ferrari everywhere else) has penned the latest script based on Donner’s original idea for the film. Warner Bros are behind the project and Danny Glover is set to reprise his role as the long-suffering Roger Murtaugh alongside Gibson’s Martin Riggs.

Should this report prove to be accurate, where this leaves Gibson’s other long-gestating directorial project, The Passion Of The Christ 2, we don’t know. That project is currently going under the title of Resurrection and was said to be ‘on the eve of production’ back in February of this year. Of course, the actors’ strike may well have thrown a spanner into the works there, but given how long we’ve heard talk of follow-up films to both Lethal Weapon and The Passion Of The Christ, the thought that both could suddenly film in the space of a calendar year seems unlikely.

It will be at least 20 years since the release of The Passion Of The Christ and even more since we last saw a new Lethal Weapon movie on our screens. The question of whether the world has moved on in that time remains to be answered. Whether either of these Mel Gibson-directed films will actually happen in 2024 is perhaps a more pressing question, but Gibson does have a film (probably) due out in 2024 – that being Flight Risk, a project headlined by Mark Wahlberg that is (probably) due to release year.