Maverick (TV Series) - Mel Gibson As Bret Maverick

Mel Gibson As Bret Maverick

In 1994, a lavish film version titled Maverick starred Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick, Jodie Foster, and James Garner as Marshal Zane Cooper, who is later revealed to be Bret's father. It was directed by Richard Donner (who had previously directed dozens of TV series prior to working in feature films), from a screenplay by Oscar-winning writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Garner maintained in later interviews that he was playing exactly the same character as in the television series, with Gibson as his son (which is consistent with the script's and Gibson's notably different interpretation of the character), but the screenplay itself leaves this open to conjecture; some assume that he was actually portraying Bret's father Beau "Pappy" Maverick. A "Making of" mini-documentary was broadcast on cable stations prior to the film's release that included no footage of Garner from the original series despite both the movie and television series having been produced by the same studio.