GIBSON LINKED WITH JUSTICE LEAGUE ALL-STAR CAST. WTF?

Hollywood star MEL GIBSON is tipped to reunited with MAD MAX director GEORGE MILLER in forthcoming superhero move JUSTICE LEAGUE. A number of A'list stars are being linked with the film, which unites comic book heroes Superman, Batman , Wonder Woman and Flash. Ryan Reynolds is expected star as Flash and Superman TV star Tom Welling is tipped to take the part to the big screen. Latest gossip suggests Miller is already on board to direct and wants to Gibson and Bruce Willis as villains Max Lord and Lex Luther. A studio source tells IESB.net that besides Gibson and Willis, Miller is also chasing Leonardo DiCaprio, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johansson for roles in the movie.


Oh my!

Gibson film venture closes Sydney office

Six years ago, the Hollywood star and his producing partner, Bruce Davey, announced they were forming a production company with the leading talent agency Shanahan Management, which represents such A-listers as Nicole Kidman, Toni Collette and Geoffrey Rush.

Icon Shanahan Productions was launched at the same time as a new distribution operation, and there were high hopes that it could produce a new generation of Australian films for international audiences.

But the company has now closed its Sydney office - and its creative director, Sally Chesher, has departed - without a single Icon Shanahan film being made.

The closest it came was the part-financing of the drama The Black Balloon, by Icon's distribution and sales agency arms. Icon Shanahan brought Collette to the film, a coming-of-age story from the director Elissa Down which is due in cinemas early next year. Collette's co-stars include the model Gemma Ward, Rhys Wakefield and Luke Ford.

Before that, Icon was involved in a production venture with the Australian arm of 20th Century Fox that dissolved after three years without making a film. Even earlier, a planned partnership between Gibson and the producer Pat Lovell also led to nothing.

While Gibson and Davey have been successful producers in the US, making such movies as Braveheart, What Women Want, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, they have come up bone dry in this country.

The chief executive of Icon's Australian operations, Mark Gooder, points to the difficulty of finding strong films that can work internationally.

"Everyone has good intentions to make as many films as they possibly can out of Australia," he says from Los Angeles. "But when it comes down to it, what are those stories that will resonate and travel overseas?

"… You talk to any producer and any studio in Australia. Are they all sitting on fantastic material that they're holding back from making? No.

"I think everyone finds it's a bit of a struggle to find strong material."

Gooder described the office closure as a "refocusing" rather than a withdrawal from Australian filmmaking. He will continue developing films from Los Angeles and has high hopes for Icon's chances under the Federal Government's new 40 per cent rebate for film production.

One project that has been in development and could still reach production, he says, is the romantic comedy/drama The Girl Most Likely, starring Pia Miranda.

Gibson outlines passion for saving forests

Gibson: ‘I’ve backed a lot of good causes – environmental and humanitarian’

KUALA LUMPUR: Oscar-winning actor and director Mel Gibson sprang a surprise when he attended a sponsorship-signing ceremony here yesterday for conservation of the rainforest.

The event was the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Petra Group and the Royal Society South-East Asia Rainforest Research Programme (SEARRP).

Petra will sponsor the latter's rainforest ecology research programme in Sabah (StarBiz: Petra plays its part in conservation)

Gibson, who last directed Apocalypto, which was set in an ancient Mayan jungle settlement, is on a two-week vacation in Malaysia. He was at the ceremony to lend his support to Petra Group's participation in the research programme on how to conserve the rainforest.

“I'm really proud and happy to be a witness to an agreement such as this. I've backed a lot of good causes – environmental and humanitarian,” he said.

He also cited a similar rainforest conservation project in El Mirador, Guatemala, which he strongly supported.

Petra Group president and chief executive officer Datuk Vinod Sekhar said the group had also “contributed in a small way” to the Guatemalan project.

Gibson also backs Green Rubber Global, a Petra Group unit in the United States that will operate a tyre recycling plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He expressed his intention to visit the local rainforest and Danum Valley Field Centre, where the SEARRP programme is undertaken.

Australian Gibson got his first break in 1979 in Mad Max, and later in the United States with The Bounty (1984).

He is also famous for his work in the Lethal Weapon series with Danny Glover.

After spending more than two decades as a leading man, Gibson ventured into directing with Braveheart and was immediately recognised with two Oscars in 1996.

A serious filmmaker, he braves all sorts of controversies – both personal and professional – to make groundbreaking films such as The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto.

Rumor has it

The film he’s in Costa Rica scouting locations for is “an epic about the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez De Balboa.”

A quick google and we discover De Balboa was “a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He traveled to the New World in 1500 and, after some exploration, settled on the island of Hispaniola. He founded the settlement of Santa María la Antigua del Darién in present-day Panama in 1510, the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas (a settlement by Alonso de Ojeda at San Sebastián de Urabá the previous year had already been abandoned). He crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition known to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.”

I don't know how true this is, we just have to wait and see.

Damn He Looks Good

GUATEMALA CITY -- Mel Gibson dined with Guatemala's president and admired Mayan murals in the capital's cultural palace after a weekend jungle visit.

The 51-year-old actor-director visited the Palace of Culture on Monday, where President Oscar Berger showed him contemporary murals portraying aspects of Mayan life and the Spanish conquest.

Afterward, the two men had lunch at the presidential palace.

Gibson has visited the country many times as a tourist, said Krista Kepfer, a spokeswoman for Berger.

"He is very interested in Guatemala as a tourist destination and in the culture," she said.

Over the weekend, Gibson visited the Mayan ruins of El Mirador deep in the northern Peten jungle, Kepfer said.

The visit was private and neither Gibson nor Berger made any statements to the news media.

Mel Gibson is not losing his religion.

He keeps investing his "Passion of the Christ" money into the church he built in Agoura Hills, Calif.

Last year, Gibson parked another $8.2 million in his AP Reilly Foundation, the tax-free entity that takes care of his Holy Family Catholic Church.

Gibson's church is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church because it does not acknowledge the authority of the pope or the Vatican or the doctrine known as Vatican II. Gibson and many of his fellow congregants are Holocaust deniers, as is Gibson's father, who has been known to contribute to neo-Nazi publications.

Gibson, nevertheless, perseveres. According to a federal tax filing obtained exclusively by this column, the foundation now has $30 million in its coffers, up from $22 million last year.

The church sits on about 11 acres of land owned by the Foundation and worth around $3 million, according to public documents.

Let's put this into perspective. Los Angeles Catholic Big Brothers and Big Sisters only has $1.6 million in its till. The Malibu Roman Catholic Church, which is recognized by the archdiocese, supports 600 families. It has a fraction of Holy Family's budget. But Holy Family is said to accommodate about 70 families altogether. That's quite a difference.

Thanks to "The Passion of the Christ" and his anti-Semitic rant last year when he was arrested in Malibu, Gibson is no longer a significant Hollywood player. But he obviously has money, and he is using it as he sees fit.