"I did react more strongly than I should have. I promptly sent you a written apology, the colorful words of which you apparently now find offensive. Let me now clearly apologize to you and your family in the simplest of terms," he says in the letter.
Eszterhas insists he was diligent and produced a script that received high praise.
But Gibson writes, "In 25 years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time."
Eszterhas could not be reached immediately on Thursday.
When plans were announced last year for Gibson to helm a movie about the Maccabees, Jewish leaders assailed the idea.
"I think it's, quite frankly, preposterous," Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles told CNN in September. "Judah Maccabee is one of the greatest heroes in Jewish history. Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. ... I don't know what Warner Bros. was thinking."
Maccabee was a Judean priest who commanded the resistance to Greek forces around 165 B.C. Hanukkah celebrates the story of the Maccabees.
"Casting him as a director or star of Judah Maccabee is like casting Bernie Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission," Hier said at the time.
A representative for Gibson, who asked not to be identified at the time, said, "It's an amazing story that should be told cinematically" and that there were no plans for Gibson to act in the film, although he might direct.
In his letter, Eszterhas says he believes Gibson is in need of medication and "extensive psychiatric counseling."
"You live in extreme isolation from the real world," Eszterhas wrote. "You don't read newspapers or magazines, you never have the TV on except to watch movies -- often your own. You rarely go out. Even the church where you worship, built at your own personal expense, is attended only by family and friends. The priest there is your hire and works for you, not God. You are truly extraordinarily and uniquely self-absorbed in a town where self-absorption is common.
Noting that "there are as many guns around your house as crucifixes," Eszterhas wrote, "I worry for you and those around you."
Eszterhas insists he was diligent and produced a script that received high praise.
But Gibson writes, "In 25 years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time."
Eszterhas could not be reached immediately on Thursday.
When plans were announced last year for Gibson to helm a movie about the Maccabees, Jewish leaders assailed the idea.
"I think it's, quite frankly, preposterous," Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles told CNN in September. "Judah Maccabee is one of the greatest heroes in Jewish history. Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. ... I don't know what Warner Bros. was thinking."
Maccabee was a Judean priest who commanded the resistance to Greek forces around 165 B.C. Hanukkah celebrates the story of the Maccabees.
"Casting him as a director or star of Judah Maccabee is like casting Bernie Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission," Hier said at the time.
A representative for Gibson, who asked not to be identified at the time, said, "It's an amazing story that should be told cinematically" and that there were no plans for Gibson to act in the film, although he might direct.
In his letter, Eszterhas says he believes Gibson is in need of medication and "extensive psychiatric counseling."
"You live in extreme isolation from the real world," Eszterhas wrote. "You don't read newspapers or magazines, you never have the TV on except to watch movies -- often your own. You rarely go out. Even the church where you worship, built at your own personal expense, is attended only by family and friends. The priest there is your hire and works for you, not God. You are truly extraordinarily and uniquely self-absorbed in a town where self-absorption is common.
Noting that "there are as many guns around your house as crucifixes," Eszterhas wrote, "I worry for you and those around you."
