I know what you’re thinking. The world needs another Lethal Weapon movie, right? But not some reboot like the seriously weak Fox series. They need to bring the gang back together again. Sure, it didn’t exactly make for a great film last time they tried that, but you can just blame that one on Chris Rock and Jet Li, right?
Given that by the time a new movie would come out, Mel Gibson would be 62, Danny Glover would be 72 and Richard Donner would be 82 and out of the directing game since he did ’16 Blocks’ in 2006, it is fair to say that they should take Glover’s character’s most famous lines as advice – They are definitely getting too old for this Sh!#.
Even if they could pull it off, what are the chances they’d be able to get Rene Russo or Joe Pesci to show up. I guess they could go without Pesci, but it would be a hell of a trick to write Russo out. And what would be the plot? Let me guess… Riggs’ daughter kid is an undercover cop and he gets in over his head. Now, Riggs has to pull Murtaugh off his fishing boat for one last mission that will probably kill one of them and reboot the franchise for a new generation? No thanks.
Last year, Shane Black was actually tasked with writing the story for a fifth Lethal Weapon film, but the movie was canned at the time due to the FOX series. Here’s how he described his plan for a new Lethal Weapon back then:
“I wrote a 62-page treatment with my friend Chuck for “Lethal Weapon 5″ that would’ve been, I think, a very good movie. It was interesting. It was essentially an older Riggs and Murtagh in New York City during the worst blizzard in east coast history, fighting a team of expert Blackwater guys from Afghanistan that’s smuggling antiquities. And we had a young character that actually counter-pointed them. But I didn’t wanna do what people do when they’re trying to transition which is, they sorta put the two older guys in the movie, but really it’s about their son! And he’s gonna take over and we’re gonna do a spinoff. Fuck that, if they’re gonna be in the movie, they’re gonna be in the movie – I don’t care how old they are.”