Lionsgate pushes release of Mel Gibson's Flight Risk to 2025

Lionsgate has pushed the release of Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk has been pushed back to 2025. The film stars Mark Wahlberg.

Flight Risk, the action thriller which marks Mel Gibson’s first time in the director’s chair since Hacksaw Ridge was supposed to be released on October 18th, but Lionsgate announced today that they have pushed that release back to January 24, 2025. While this delay is disappointing, mid-budget action movies such as Flight Risk can do well in January; David Ayer’s The Beekeeper is a recent example.

Directed by Mel Gibson and written by Jared Rosenberg, Flight Risk finds Wahlberg playing a pilot transporting an Air Marshall (Michelle Dockery) accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace) to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar, and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.”

Our own Chris Bumbray was able to see a trailer for Flight Risk at CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year and teased that Wahlberg is playing “WAY against type” in the movie. “He even shaved his head to look like he has a bald pate,” Bumbray wrote. “Looks like a really tight kickass thriller, and Gibson REALLY makes Walhberg look crazy in this.” We finally got to see the trailer for ourselves this summer, and yep, this is Wahlberg as we’ve never seen him before.

The new release date will see Flight Risk open alongside Screamboat, a horror reimagining of Disney’s Steamboat Willy, in which a murderous version of Mickey Mouse brings death to the passengers of a late-night ferry. Inheritance, a thriller starring Phoebe Dynevor and Rhys Ifans, and Valiant One, an action thriller starring Chase Stokes and Lana Condor, will also open on the same date. Still, it’s less busy than the film’s previous date, which would have found it opening alongside six other movies, including the highly anticipated Smile 2.

Gibson’s next directorial outing could be the long-awaited Lethal Weapon 5. “I’m going to direct the fifth film in the Lethal Weapon series. You know, Richard Donner, who did the other four, sadly passed away. He was a good friend, and he kind of tasked me with carrying the flag home on that one,” Gibson said earlier this summer. “It’ll be an honor for me to do that. He [Richard Donner] had gotten a fair way into the screenplay, so we’ve used what was there, and we kept poking at it, working at it a little. I’m pretty happy with it, it’s good, I had a lot of fun doing it.“