Here's What Shane Black's LETHAL WEAPON 5 Would Have Been About
Writer/director Shane Black got his big break in Hollywood when he sold his screenplay for Lethal Weapon at the tender age of 24. He originally worked on the sequel before the production decided to move in a different direction, and he's largely stayed away from the franchise ever since. But there was a time, years after Lethal Weapon 4, when he was thinking about getting involved again and making another sequel of his own. While making the rounds promoting his new movie The Nice Guys (in theaters now, our review here), Black told the Nerdist Writers Panel podcast his plan for what his version of Lethal Weapon 5 would have been:
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 Murtaugh 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.
I don't necessarily think this is a movie I'd like to see right now, but a few years ago, pre-Mel Gibson antics and before Danny Glover became a go-to guy for direct-to-DVD fare? Sure, that sounds like it would have been a pretty good time. I admire how Black is so vehemently against the idea of passing the torch, which seems to be something studios are constantly looking for a way to do these days. You know what? I'd actually rather spend two hours with current Gibson and Glover than watch a single second of that godawful-looking Fox TV version of Lethal Weapon. What a joke.
Then again, Lethal Weapon 5 already exists in one form, and it's pretty close to perfect as is: