Corona | Coming Attractions

Mel Gibson will play the main character in Jodie Foster's next directoral project, The Beaver. Foster will play the wife of Gibson's character, a depressed man who interacts with the world via a hand puppet shaped like a beaver. Sounds like a truly mainstream idea if there ever was one, right?

The Beaver was voted the number one unproduced screenplay on last year's Blacklist, a compilation of movie scripts that haven't been turned into films yet. When the 2008 Blacklist made the rounds late last year and The Beaver was at the top of the pile, it then attracted the interest of The Office star Steve Carell. Written by Kyle Killen, the movie will receive have a huge boost to its visibility with the involvement of two of Hollywood's best-known stars (even if Gibson is still recovering from his divorce and ill-chosen words.) Foster hasn't directed a film since the 1995 movie Home For the Holidays.

The movie is budgeted at around $19 million dollars and it doesn't have the backing of a movie studio, which technically makes it an indie. Production is tentatively scheduled to start in the fall.