Mel Gibson's Prison Flick Update

We only yesterday reported Mel Gibson’s Viking project with Leonardo DiCaprio, but news of his mysterious Mexico-set prison drama have surfaced via Variety. It has been announced Mel will be starring (and not directing) in How I Spent My Summer Vacation. If that sounds like a romantic comedy – it isn’t. It may have a disarming title, but the film is an action-drama, in which Gibson plays a criminal who is sent down and put away in a Mexican prison where he befriends a nine year-old boy. This sounds a little familiar to the man’s directorial debut, The Man Without A Face.

Production begins in March. In the past year and only last week, too, Gibson has been spotted in the Veracruz region of Mexico on a location recce. The film is shooting in a real prison. Adrian Grunberg, first A.D. on ‘Apocalypto’, is directing.

It will be a busy year for the Braveheart director. Will 2010 be “The Year of the Mel?” After a long hiatus, he returns on our screens in Edge of Darkness then follows that with Jodie Foster’s The Beevor. Along side this there’s the much-reported Viking movie. After a troubled decade that has seen the man they called Max (a long time ago) more on entertainment shows and magazines more than cinema screens, it is great he’s back to what he does best: being a first-rate film star and actor.

Tags: Apocalypto, Braveheart, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Jodie Foster, mel gibson, The Man Without A Face