Mel Gibson recently gave a Q&A session after a screening of George Miller’s original Mad Max at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. During the event, Gibson dropped some details on his upcoming projects, which include a Viking epic - now been titled Berserker - his upcoming film about Judah Maccabee and George Miller’s thoughts on the latest Mad Max film, Fury Road.

Gibson's next film, Get The Gringo (formally titled How I Spent My Summer Vacation), is going straight to VOD but he appears to still be interested in big-budget filmmaking - much like his previous directorial efforts Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto.

With regards to the Viking film Berserker, Gibson said:

“I just got a second draft of something I'm really excited about today. It's actually a Viking thing. Vikings, as you know, are very unsympathetic characters and these guys will be bad. I sort of hooked up again with Randall Wallace, who did the script on Braveheart. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's called Berserker."

He went on to say that the portrayal of Vikings in the film would be unlike anything that we’ve seen from Hollywood before (presumably the Kirk Douglas starrer The Vikings):

“They did not have horns. No, I don't think they had horns. They're going to look real. I want to make something real and visceral."

When asked if Leonardo DiCaprio and writer William Monahan were still involved in the film , the Lethal Weapon actor replied:

"Things begin and people wander off and do their thing and I do my thing. I just took my stuff and wrote it with Randall. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess."

In relation to his Maccabee movie, Gibson said:

"I'm working with Joe Eszterhas on that. That's from the last two books of the Old Testament, which is like; just read it some time. Maccabee 1 and 2. Just read it, it's like a Western. It's an amazing story. It's heroic beyond belief. The entire might of the Seleucid Empire, which was Persia, their whole objective at the time was to wipe Judea off the map and they almost did it except for this little hold out that miraculously grew and wanted it all back again."

Gibson also spilled some of his thoughts on Mad Max: Fury Road, which has The Dark Knight Rises star Tom Hardy taking over the titular role:

"I like that kid, Tom Hardy. He's a very interesting actor. He reminds me of one my sons a bit but I had lunch with him, he's a firecracker. It'll be good. He was already cast, he just wanted to check in. I don't know, maybe it was like 'Is it okay?' I was like 'Sure, it's fine. Have a ball, knock yourself out. I got better things to do.'"

It seems like Gibson is still very passionate (no pun intended) about making films, but it appears that he’s willing to spend more time behind the camera than in front of it.

Source: The Playlist