New Mel Gibson movie, 'The Informant,' starts filming in Las Cruces

LAS CRUCES - New Mexico’s latest movie production started filming at the Old Doña Ana County Courthouse in Las Cruces this week, featuring Mel Gibson, a familiar face around town.

Gibson was seen around town last year while he was in the area filming “Hot Seat,” also starring Shannen Doherty and Kevin Dillon.

This week, actors and crew members have taken over rooms of the historic building to look like various settings for the film entitled “The Informant.” According to information provided by the New Mexico Film Office, the movie follows an undercover narcotics cop diagnosed with a terminal illness and faced with myriad late bills. In order to financially support his family, the cop works with his partner and their “junkie” informant to stage his own death.

Producer Daniel Cummings said the movie is based on a true story of narcotics officers from the 1990s. The main cop decides to fake his death, as dying in the line of duty would ensure his family is taken care of. He works with the informant on the setup.

“It’s not easy to make Las Cruces look like (Upstate) New York,” he said.

Stars include Mel Gibson (“Braveheart,” “Lethal Weapon,” Hot Seat”), Kate Bosworth (“21,” “Superman Returns,” “The Locksmith”), Dominic Purcell (“Blade: Trinity,” “Killer Elite”) and Nick Stahl (“Sin City” “The Man Without A Face”) – two of whom have filmed movies around the Las Cruces area in the past year. Michael Oblowitz (“The World, Then the Fireworks,” “The Traveler”) is directing.

Cummings welcomed two Sun-News reporters on set Tuesday at the old courthouse, giving a tour of the rooms taken over for filming.

The former courtroom on the second floor is being used as a staging area for the cast and crew. Down the hall, the former judge’s office has been set up as a New York City police office.

“One thing I learned on this shoot is narcotics officers, their offices are not standard police offices … If they're kind of surveilling someone, they just find an abandoned building and set up shop in there, so you don't have nameplates on the doors or any of that,” Cummings said. “When you see what it looks like, or see what it looks like on camera, you’d never believe it's in here. It just feels like it's a totally different world.”

A downstairs room is staged for a small cop funeral, using a donated casket from a local funeral home. Movie magic during the editing process will make the room look much bigger than it really is.

Cummings explained that Gibson is playing a senior sergeant, not the main role of the financially fraught officer.

He said one of the cops involved in the true events is a writer on the project. According to IMDb, Michael Kaycheck retired from law enforcement and has written for and acted on such TV shows as “The Good Wife,” “NYPD Blue” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.”

Filming will take place in Las Cruces for a few days before the production head north to Vancouver to film exterior shots. Aside from the courthouse, Cummings said some filming will also take place at a house on Las Cruces Avenue and along Main Street downtown.

Cummings has worked on multiple movie productions in various capacities in New Mexico since 2019, including “Locksmith,” “Squealer,” and “Dig” in the Las Cruces area. He said he plans to bring two more films he is producing to town by the end of the year.

“I saw how film-friendly the community is and how they're really excited and really easy to work with. And there's a lot of locations that haven't been seen in every other episode of “Breaking Bad,” like Albuquerque, so I think it's a very good place for film. Especially indie film because you don't always have the big, big budgets,” Cummings said.

He added that, even though there are not large film studios in the area, there are so many locations throughout Doña Ana County that provide the opportunity for different aesthetics. The film crew available in southern New Mexico is another positive aspect of working in the area, he said. Crew members are a short commodity in the area, he said, though he anticipates more people will join the industry as film infrastructure continues to grow in the state.

One of Cumming’s next films will be a Coen brother’s-type production set in the southwest. He said filming will take about four to five weeks in Las Cruces and production plans to hire a large part of their crew locally, along with local on-screen talent. He said they are still working on casting for the second film.

Audiences can likely expect to see the finished product of “The Informant” next year, in six to nine months following editing and post-production work.

Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News and can be reached at 575-418-3442, lromero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Mel Gibson starts filming 'The Informant' in Las Cruces