WME Drops Mel Gibson as a Client

Posted on July 9, 2010

Top talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) has dumped Mel Gibson as a client in light of the ghastly things Mel has been saying and doing lately. A Deadline report says it is because he used the n-word.

"There is no way, with Ed Limato not here, that Mel Gibson would be a client of this company," an insider just told me. "I don't think anybody's surprised by this, given Ari's history." Of course that's a reference to Ari Emanuel's July 2006 appeal to Hollywood not to work with Gibson after the actor's drunken anti-Semitic rant during an arrest by the Malibu Sheriff. Then, irony of ironies, Ari inherited Mel as a client when Endeavor agency merged in April 2009 with the William Morris Agency where Ed Limato was a senior agent. Limato had represented Gibson since the start of the actor's Hollywood career.

So who is repping Mel in Hollywood? Someone will no doubt pick him up, although surely he's box office poison at this point. Mel has two movies that have wrapped: one is the improbably named The Beaver which was directed by Jodie Foster and is being distributed by Summit Entertainment (of Twilight fame), and How I Spent My Summer Vacation which stars Mel as a criminal who is imprisoned in Mexico and a young boy who keeps him alive.

We can't imagine how they could even do publicity for those films at this point.

MOVIES