It can’t be much fun to be Mel Gibson at the moment. He’s still deeply embroiled in a war of words and embarrassing audiotapes, and has seen any sign of a career resurgence falter along with it. But someone still wants to work with him, as Robert Rodriguez has reached out to bring him aboard Machete Kills.
The film finds Danny Trejo back as the toughest Federale around, dispatched by the US government to track down an arms dealer in Mexico before the villain can launch a destructive rocket.
Rodriguez is in the process of rounding up as much of the surviving Machete cast as he can, and he has talked before about recruiting both Gibson and Michelle Williams, amongst others.
While he co-directed the original with Ethan Maniquis, Rodriguez apparently likes his script for the new movie so much that he wants to do as much of it as he can alone. “Currently I am directing it,” Rodriguez tells the Hollywood Reporter. “But we’re checking to see if there’s going to be the need for another director if I have to go off and do Sin City 2. I wasn’t sure what the timing on Sin City was or if I would have to step off to do **Sin City **at a certain point, depending on when Machete went. But Machete looks like it’s going to go pretty quickly so it’s possible that I will direct the whole thing.”
Gibson’s latest movie – How I Spent My Summer Vacation – is out here on May 11, but is going straight to DVD in the US.