Mel Gibson's latest cinematic second chance will be a paramedic drama with Tye Sheridan
Having fulfilled his contractual obligations by not publicly fucking up—or, like, hitting someone at a party—for another year, Mel Gibson has now been dutifully handed yet another starring role in a Hollywood film. Specifically, Gibson—who managed to successfully resist his urge to shout racial slurs or insult women for the entirety of our latest trip around the sun—will appear opposite Ready Player One’s Tye Sheridan in a new film about New York paramedics. Jean-Stephane Sauvaire (A Prayer Before Dawn) is set to direct Black Flies, based on a book by Shannon Burke and adapted into a Blacklist script by Ryan King.
Sheridan—whose other recent credits include X-Men: Apocalypse and The Mountain—will play a newbie paramedic, getting a crash course in the grimy world of New York emergency medicine from his grimy new partner. Said grimester is played, probably pretty convincingly, by Gibson, most recently seen in S. Craig Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete and as Bad Daddy in Daddy’s Home 2. Here he’ll play Rutkovsky, “an experienced medic who thrusts [Sheridan’s character] into the harsh realities of New York’s inner-city streets.” Does that sound pretty much exactly like Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead, except with Gibson in all three “unpredictable partner” roles? Sure, but hey, we’ve got to put this guy somewhere, right? He can’t spend all his time arguing about the dictionary.