LOS ANGELES — Mel Gibson’s involvement in a film about the legendary Jewish warrior Judah Maccabee was taking heat from Jewish groups Friday.
Gibson’s Icon production company is set to oversee the project for Warner Bros., though Gibson is still on the fence about directing the movie.
“Casting him as a director or perhaps as the star of ‘Judah Maccabee’ is like casting Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, said in a statement.
Gibson has become something of an industry pariah over accusations of anti-Semitism stemming from a 2006 traffic stop and abusive telephone calls recorded by his former lover.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham H. Foxman spoke out against the reported project, saying, “It would be a travesty to have the story of the Maccabees told by one who has no respect and sensitivity for other people’s religious views.”
Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster about the crucifixion of Jesus, “The Passion of the Christ,” was met with accusations that he inaccurately depicted Jewish leaders in the film, prompting ADL chief Foxman to describe it at the time as “painful to watch.”
The actor then faced harsh backlash after a 2006 DUI arrest in Los Angeles during which he told a police officer, “F*cking Jews … the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” according to the arrest report. He apologized afterward, saying that he had “disgraced myself and my family with my behavior.”
The public battle between the 55-year-old Oscar winner and Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his young daughter, included charges of verbal and physical abuse along with the release of recorded phone calls featuring a raging Gibson allegedly making anti-Semitic and racist comments.
The story of Maccabee, the warrior hero who is commemorated at Hanukkah, is one that has reportedly interested Gibson for years, and at one point was being touted as his follow-up project after the huge success of “The Passion of the Christ.” Maccabee, along with his brothers and father, led the Jewish revolt against the Greek-Syrian armies in the second century B.C.
The screenwriter on the project is reported to be Joe Eszterhas of “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls” fame. Eszterhas also received the Emanuel Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 for his depiction of the Holocaust in Hungary, according to the Los Angeles Times.