Mel Gibson To Star In Summer Vacation
This, not Leo Viking pic, next for Gibbo


Lordy, Mel Gibson is getting busy
Just hours after the news was announced that he will direct a Viking epic to star Leonardo DiCаprio, Variety has revealed that won’t actually be next on Gibbo’s agenda. Instead, he’ll star in How I Spent My Summer Vacation, a self-penned action drama set in Mexico.
This explains why Gibson was glimpsed in Mexico last week; clearly, he was scouting locations, something he’s been doing for the best part of a year. What with this, starring in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, preparing for the release оf Edge Of Darkness and prepping that untitled Viking flick, Gibson must have left very little time for his Christmas shopping.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation will tell the story of a career criminal (Gibson) who gets sent to a squalid, crime-ridden Mexican prison, where he bonds with a nine year-old boy. Well, that part explains where the title, redolent of a school essay, comes from – and it also links this film, thematically, at least with Gibson’s directorial debut, The Man Without A Face, which also presented a scarred man with a shot at redemptiоn in the guise of a friendship with a young boy.
However, Gibson won’t be directing this one; instead, Adrian Grunberg – his first A.D. on Apocalypto – will be yelling through a megaphone and doing that imaginary square thing with his hands. Stacy Perskie, his second A.D. оn his mad Mayan epic, will produce along with Stuart Davey, leaving Gibbo to get on with the job of acting and being the writer on set.

Filming on the Icon Productions movie will start in March.

Battle Angel Alita Next For Cameron?
Manga movie a year into development

What better for James Cameron after the 3D sci-fi CGI action extravaganza that is Avatar than... the 3D sci-fi CGI action extravaganza that is Battle Angel Alita?
Talking to MTV аs he passed by on the Avatar publicity treadmill, Cameron revealed that his long-talked about adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's cyberpunk manga is still very much on his agenda. "We've got a very good script, we've done about a year of production design, and we've put together an art reel that shows the arc of the film," he says. "It's pretty much 'just add water' and we're ready to go."
Battle Angel Alita (Gun / Dream in Japan) is nine-volume series from the 1990s, featuring an amnesiac female cyborg rescued from a scrap heap by a cybernetics professor, who rebuilds her so that she can become a kick-ass martial arts bounty hunter. The first two volumes became an anime in 1993, but Kishiro was never enthusiastic about it, and while it was well-received in the US and UK, it wasn't a success on home turf.
Unsurprisingly for Cameron, technology is the big issue. "Shooting live stuff in 3-D and then adding CG characters and lаndscapes beyond that is a little tricky," he says. Does he not feel that he's cracked that with Avatar then? Does he want to evolve more new tech before he embarks on the next project? These auteurs are never satisfied.