European buyers and others take a Vacation with Mel Gibson

And speaking of actors who became directors in the 1990s, Mel Gibson’s comeback doesn’t seem to be going well.

While his Edge of Darkness has a 55% fresh rating on the Tomatometer, it has only grossed $37 million in its first two and a half weeks of release. For a film with a reported $80 million budget, that’s not so good.

Perhaps audiences needs to see him getting beaten up some more, is what his business manager and/or agent is thinking, for Gibson and his production studio Icon Productions took an action movie screenplay with them to the European Film Festival and sold the hell out of it, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Called How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Gibson stars and co-wrote the screenplay about a career criminal (Gibson) who gets sent to a Mexican prison and how he survives the experience. The film was directed by Adrian Grunberg, Gibson’s first assistant director on his Apocalypto.

Thanks to a flurry of deals with international distributors, Vacation will be shown in Benelux, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Portugal, Scandinavia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the Middle East. Though there is no word on who will distribute in the U.S. and Canada, Icon Productions will handle distribution in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K.

Filming starts in an actual Mexican prison in March.