It may be that 2010 is the year Mel Gibson returns to the limelight — 8 years after his last on-screen role and following tabloid mania that has shifted his image in drastically negative ways. He’s got two big projects on the way. The first is Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, and the second is Edge of Darkness from director Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale).

A remake of Campbell’s own 1985 U.K. miniseries, the film features Gibson, Ray Winstone and Danny Huston in a script by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell. Check out the trailer below for a great glimpse of what we’re in store for. Edge of Darkness is slated for release on January 29, 2010.

I can’t lie to you — I just about died laughing at these pictures taken from the set of Jodie Foster’s The Beaver featuring Mel Gibson. I have no idea if the finished product will provide half as many laughs as these still did, but if so, Mel might be delivering his most enjoyable product since Signs, and even that’s a stretch for some.

I’m not sure if it’s Gibson’s slack-jawed expression or the hilarious design of the titular Beaver that did me in, and to be honest I don’t entirely care.

The film centers around Walter (Gibson),

“[a] troubled father and husband and CEO of a stalling toy company [who gives voice to] The Beaver, a glove puppet that Walter finds, starts to wear without pause, and adopts as a kind of avatar through which he carries out all of his communication. Almost all of the dialogue given to the lead actor throughout the entire screenplay will have to come from the Beaver, and be delivered in [what screenwriter Kyle Killen describes as] a ‘crisp English accent’.”

The film sat on the 2008 Black List, a list of the best unproduced screenplays from a given year — and true to form, everything I’ve heard about the script tells me it’ll be a riot. Mel Gibson needs redemption, and one of the few avenues open to him at this point is something as off-kilter as this.

This is Foster’s first directorial effort since 1995′s Home for the Holidays. The film will co-star Anton Yelchin of Star Trek fame and Jennifer Lawrence. The Beaver will be released on an undetermined date in 2011.

Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster are both circling around the property of The Beaver, a drama about a man who has a beaver hand puppet that he treats around like a real animal of sorts. Gibson is in talks at the moment to play the some what imaginatively intriguing lead. Foster on the other hand is not only looking around to co-star alongside the talented actor but to jump into the director’s chair for this particular flick.

Directed by Kyle Killen, this particular film has been dangled around quite a few faces and is expected to possibly start production by the end of this year. The release date is estimated to be placed sometime in 2011