After almost eight years away from screens as an actor and it looks like Mel Gibson is returning to starring roles in a big way.

Following the star's forthcoming projects Edge of Darkness and the Jodie Foster directed The Beaver (alongside his own directing duties for the  forthcoming Leonardo DiCaprio Viking film) comes news that Gibson will write and star in the action drama,  How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

According to Variety:

"Summer Vacation centers on a career criminal who gets caught by Mexican authorities and is sent to a drug- and crime-filled prison, where he learns how to survive with the help of a 9-year-old boy."

The film will be the third film that the actor-director has written, following The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto - but this will be the first that he doesn't direct. Vacation will be directed by Adrian Grunberg, who was First Assistant Director on Gibson's Apocalypto.

The film will start shooting this March in San Diego and Veracruz, Mexico. This news puts yet another nail in the coffin of any chance that Gibson will appear in Mad Max Fury Road (set to shoot this summer), with his DiCaprio Viking film due to go before cameras in the fall.

At the very least it's pretty cool to have Gibson back on the big-screen, and with Gibson and his Apocalypto crew behind How I Spent My Summer Vacation, we can rest assured knowing that the film should be violent. Very violent.

More on How I Spent My Summer Vacation when we get it.

Source: Variety