Sorry Mel, your comeback will have to wait at least another year. Though completed a while ago (it screened for buyers at Cannes last year), the Mel Gibson action vehicle "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" has stayed on the backburner as folks perhaps waited for the troubled actor/writer/director to get back on his feet. Well, that hasn't quite happened and a result, the film is skipping the multiplex and is going to your TV instead.
Gibon's Icon Productions has struck a deal with 20th Century Fox to give the newly titled "Get The Gringo" (which will surely draw criticism from certain quarters) a premieum VOD release on May 1st on DirecTV. For $10.99 you can zap the movie into your own home, for better or worse. Helmed by longtime second unit and assistant director Adrian Grunberg ("Apocalypto," "The Limits Of Control," "Traffic," "Jarhead") and co-starring Peter Stormare, Gibson plays Driver, who with a bleeding body in the backseat of his car, escapes from Border Patrol by crashing into the border wall and winds up locked up a Mexican prison. While he's there, he learns to survive thanks to the help of a 10 year-old boy. Check out the trailer courtesy of The Film Stage below.
So if people didn't want to see Gibson in theaters last year (please see the dismal box office for "The Beaver") are they gonna choose him from a plethora of other options at home? Guess we'll see. It should be noted that this being spun as some kind of game changing move by Gibson, but let's be honest, had Jodie Foster's movie done well, this VOD plan would have never been in the cards. In the meantime, Gibson continues developing his directorial projects including the long gestating Viking flick which now has a second draft of a script handed in by Randall Wallace as well as his controversial Judah Maccabee tale. But whether they actually get made, remains to be seen. [Deadline]
Being Aussie of course I love Mel. And I love Peter Stormare too. Worked with him recently on The Wayshower (premiering March 8 @ the Arclight Dome). Free tix to the red carpet premiere – just search the Wayshower movie on Facebook.
Mel was one of the most intensely charismatic and watchable movie stars to ever exist, but he is very, very old now. His replacement should have been breaking out SEVEN YEARS AGO, but thanks to Hollywood turning its back on the younger generation and action fans in general, we are left with nothing while the old guard keeps making action movies until they are 100 and looking increasingly ridiculous. Damn you Hollywood.
The combination of Gibson, that top picture, and 'How I Spent My Summer Vacation' is genius. Shame they changed the title.
Mel + Vikings = Awesome.
Can't wait for Mel's Viking flick, i'll be there opening day. I couldn't give two shits what he does in his personal life.