Vince Vaughn joins Andrew Garfield in Mel Gibson’s next movie

His most recent film – Unfinished Business – was not, to put it kindly, well received, and he’s scoring some divisive reactions for his work on this season of True Detective.

As the first directorial effort from Gibson in a decade, Hawksaw Ridge is a World War II drama that has raised plenty of eyebrows in Hollywood, not least of all because of its growing, impressive cast, including Andrew Garfield and Sam Worthington.

The Oscar-winning actor and director joined the NSW deputy premier and minister for the arts, Troy Grant, at a press conference in Sydney to announce the production.

“I can’t think of a better place to shoot this film than here in Sydney and NSW, where I was fortunate to have grown up and started my career”, Gibson said.

Hacksaw Ridge is the true story of Desmond Dross (Garfield), a WWII soldier who became the first Conscientious Objector in American history to be awarded the Medal of Honour, for single-handedly moving 75 injured soldiers under enemy fire during the 1945 battle of Okinawa. “It’s about a man who wouldn’t touch a weapon and yet wanted to be part of saving lives in the worst place on Earth”, he said. Gibson said the state was the “clear choice” for filming.

Pre-production has already begun, with the film to be released in 2017. “There were over 300,000 casualties, mostly civilian, which is really sad”.

This marks the fifth film behind the camera for Gibson (The Passion of The Christ, Apocalypto).