Joel Silver Talks 'Lethal Weapon 5', 'Sgt. Rock' and More!

While in London last week visiting the set of Sherlock Holmes, Cinematical had a chance to sit down with producers Joel Silver and Susan Downey and chat up a bunch of projects that may or may not still be in the works. There's been a whole bunch of chatter recently surrounding Lethal Weapon 5, and how Mel Gibson didn't want to do it, but Shane Black did ... blah blah blah. Well Cinematical asked Silver flat out whether a Lethal sequel was in the cards, and here's what he had to say: "No, I tried and we talked about it, but it was something that Mel didn't want to do now. It doesn't mean that he wants to do it ever, but as of right now, he didn't, and if we can do it, it would be fun to do. Shane (Black) had a great take on it, a great idea, great feeling about it. He did a really complex kind of treatment/outline, very complicated and very good, but we can do it one day. The idea that they wanted to get it up right away, we couldn't do that, but we'll see what happens."

Both Sgt. Rock (based on the popular comic) and a remake of The Dirty Dozen are in similar situations. Both projects had been circling Guy Ritchie, but following RockNRolla, the writer-director wanted to go back to work right away and not only was Sherlock Holmes "different and unique," but it was also the farthest along in development.

Silver adds: "Guy did a great job on the script for Sgt. Rock and I think that when Inglourious Basterds was coming together so quickly, it made sense to kind of jump off that and jump onto this, because it was something that was really different and unique. I loved to think that one day we will make Sgt. Rock. Inglourious Basterds is a war movie and I'm looking forward to seeing it, but it's something that was a direct competition to Sgt. Rock so I felt that we should hold off and do that when we can."

Sherlock Holmes arrives in theaters on November 20, 2009, and we'll have more from the set at a later date.