How do you know Mel Gibson is poised for a comeback? Easy, he feels emboldened enough to talk some serious catshit about somebody else's movie. Currently he's riding a feel-good wave after glowing reviews out of Venice for his war drama, Hacksaw Ridge, a film some say could get him back in the Oscars race. He was also great in the recent action thriller, Blood Father, and earned strong notices for that.
Deadline spoke with him and during their conversation Gibson made it clear his interest in directing or appearing in a superhero movie is zero, and that he's got no love for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, either...
"I look at them and scratch my head. I’m really baffled by it. I think there’s a lot of waste but maybe if I did one of those things with the green screens I’d find out different. I don’t know. Maybe they do cost that much. I don’t know. It seems to me that you could do it for less. If you’re spending outrageous amounts of money, $180 million or more, I don’t know how you make it back after the tax man gets you, and after you give half to the exhibitors. What did they spend on ‘Batman v Superman’ that they’re admitting to? And it’s a piece of shit."
The "piece of shit" response came after he was told the cost of the movie, rumored to be about $250M and that's without marketing costs. So he's right in one sense that these Hollywood movies have no business costing as much as they do. Half the flops that came out this summer would have been just fine if they were about $100M cheaper. But could Gibson have made that point without piling on 'Batman v Superman'? Probably.
Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge hits theaters on November 4th. You can check out Blood Father right now, and probably should.
