Advance Copy Of “The Beaver” Stolen From Mel Gibson’s Mailbox

When it rains, it pours. Especially if your name is Mel Gibson.

The scandal-scarred screen star was forced to call the police over the weekend after an advanced DVD copy of his forthcoming film The Beaver was stolen from a mailbox outside his Los Angeles home.

Production bosses at Summit Entertainment sent Gibson a copy of the film, directed by Gibson’s good friend actress Jodie Foster, so he could view the final cut before its world premiere at the upcoming South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Post screening at his home, Gibson placed it back in his mailbox ready for collection by a courier. By the time the deliveryman arrived, however, the DVD was nowhere to be found, forcing the star to report the incident to the local authorities. According to TMZ, officers at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are now investigating the matter as a petty theft.

This is just the latest blow for the image-thrased OctoMel, who spent the latter half of 2010 embroiled in an ongoing custody-domestic violence scandal with former flame Oksana Grigorieva. Recordings of voicemail messages released over the Internet also appeared to feature Gibson subjecting Grigorieva to rants filled with expletives and racial slurs.

For those not in-the-know, The Beaver, which co-stars Foster as his disgruntled wife, features Gibson as Walter Black — a depressed, lonely man, who copes with his problems by speaking through a beaver puppet. Critics have suggested the timing of its release is not ideal for the 54-year-old actor. Comedy critic Katla McGlynn quipped that after Mel spent “half of 2010 showing the world how crazy he can really be’, he had now been made to look ‘just as crazy as a talking beaver puppet.”

The movie will arrive in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on March 23, 2011, before it’s rolled out nationwide on April 8.