Warner Bros. backing Mel Gibson movie about Jewish icon
Warner Bros. is joining forces with Mel Gibson to develop a movie about the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee, and Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has come aboard to write the screenplay. Gibson will produce through his Icon Productions and will decide whether he’ll act in or direct the film once the script is completed. Although Gibson was accused of anti-Semitism by a number of Jewish leaders when he released The Passion of the Christ in 2004, he’s wanted to tackle a movie about Maccabee for more than a decade. Maccabbee, considered one of the great warriors in Jewish history, led a popular revolt against he Seleucid king Antiochus IV, seizing Jerusalem and reconsecrating the Temple, an event remembered by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Eszterhas, who hit it big in the ‘80s with movies like Flashdance, Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct, before retreating from Hollywood in recent years, has been talking with Gibson for about a year and did a lot of his own research on the...