Is TV Gibson’s new passion?

Last fall, as the controversy over his film “The Passion of the Christ” was heating up, Mel Gibson found time to visit the Burbank headquarters of ABC.

The actor-director came to discuss “Savages,” a proposed sitcom -- about a divorced firefighter raising five sons -- that Gibson and his partners were pitching. Like any good salesman, Gibson personalized his pitch, telling ABC executives that the script was partly based on his own household, where he and wife Robyn are raising seven kids.

“A lot of the main character is a Mel Gibson type, kind of a guy’s guy,” says Stephanie Leifer, ABC’s senior vice president of comedy programming. Gibson and the writers “talked about the chaos of having big families.” Network executives were evidently impressed: They ordered the pilot, which is one of several Gibson has under consideration for next season.

Virtually everyone knows that “The Passion,” Gibson’s unflinching version of Jesus’ final hours, opened Ash Wednesday, roiling the film world. Less visible, though, are the star’s tireless efforts to expand his resume as a producer, especially in the potentially lucrative world of television, where the payout from a hit series could dwarf whatever final proceeds the star collects from “The Passion,” which grossed $26.6 million its first day in theaters.

Still, Gibson’s recent involvement in television does not mean he’s walking away from the feature film business. Among his film projects is “Mr. Lucky,” a comedy in which he would star that is being developed by Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios for Sony Pictures. And there’s still talk of the fourth installment in the “Mad Max” series.

While the entertainment industry has been on the fence on whether the controversy surrounding “The Passion” would affect Gibson’s career, his agent, ICM’s Ed Limato, said, “Nothing is going to hurt Mel Gibson. He’s a huge international and beloved star. If anything, he’s more beloved for his bravery and willingness to bring [‘The Passion’] to the screen.... His detractors have helped this film become a huge box-office thing.”

The recent spurt of TV activity is notable for Gibson’s Icon Productions given that its previous major TV credit was co-producing a 2000 ABC movie about the Three Stooges. The 15-year-old company Gibson launched with longtime business partner Bruce Davey is producing a TV movie about 1970s daredevil Evel Knievel. The company is also behind a drama pilot for CBS called “Clubhouse,” about life in Major League Baseball told from the viewpoint of a bat boy.

All told, Icon has series pilots at ABC, CBS and UPN, plus the Knievel movie for cable network TNT. The company also produced a “making-of” special on “The Passion” that delivered high ratings for broadcaster Pax TV.

“This is their best year by far,” one TV agent said of Icon. Much of the reason may have to do with the star’s involvement. “A lot of it’s because Mel is willing to go into [pitch] rooms and sell shows,” the agent added.

Although there’s no guarantee that the pilots will wind up on fall schedules -- networks don’t unveil their new slates until mid-May, and even the participation of a major star like Gibson doesn’t mean that any of his shows will be picked up -- Gibson is undoubtedly getting more serious about his small-screen ambitions. Whether that has anything to do with “The Passion” is open to debate. In a recent interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, who represents a news division of one of the networks with which Icon is developing pilots, Gibson indicated that he was tired of being a movie star. He revealed a desire to step up his behind-the-camera involvement in projects.

Davey, the star’s partner, said any link between the publicity bonanza for “Passion” and Icon’s current TV push is purely coincidental. Davey noted that the company three years ago hired an experienced TV executive, Nancy Cotton, to develop new projects, and it’s taken this long to find some promising properties.

“Nothing happens without a lot of care and effort,” Davey said, adding that independent TV producers often run in streaks. “Next year, who knows? Maybe [we’ll have] nothing” in television.

Cotton said the company was taking a gradual approach to TV. “Obviously, we’re a very small division, so we’re not in the volume business,” she said. But she added that Gibson’s connections have proven beneficial. For instance, Julie Thacker-Scully and Mike Scully, the husband-and-wife writing team behind “Savages,” are longtime friends of Mel and Robyn Gibson. The Scullys, best known for their work on Fox’s “The Simpsons,” wrote the script after swapping stories with Gibson about the difficulties of managing a large brood. According to a script draft, the pilot centers on the Savage family’s efforts to take care of themselves after the latest in a long line of housekeepers quits in frustration.

“Kevin Hill,” the UPN pilot, stars Taye Diggs as a hotshot attorney. “Clubhouse,” the CBS pilot, features Dean Cain and Mare Winningham. Alan Nierob, a spokesman for Gibson, said the star was unavailable to discuss his TV projects.

For network executives, the involvement of a major movie star is generally a plus.

Sandra Bullock, for example, is an executive producer of ABC’s “The George Lopez Show” and even did some walk-ons. And Tom Hanks served as executive producer and sometime writer-director for the HBO series “Band of Brothers” and “From the Earth to the Moon.”

Gibson’s backing of a series could prove similarly beneficial for a network.

“You can use it as a potential selling point, to get [the series] noticed” by audiences, ABC’s Leifer said.

Given the potential upside of a hit series, the risk to Icon is fairly small. Gibson’s company is partnering with studios that will actually bear the cost of producing the series. For example, “Savages” is being done in conjunction with Universal Television, while Icon is partnering with Spelling Television for “Clubhouse,” the CBS pilot. Walt Disney Co.’s Touchstone Television is producing the UPN pilot with Icon.

Icon has a long-standing theatrical film deal with 20th Century Fox, but the company has no such arrangement on the TV side. That means that Gibson has to bear most of his overhead costs for TV development, even if the studio partners pick up the production expenses. On the other hand, the company is free to pick and choose its partners and projects.

“We are a free agent, as it were,” Davey said.

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Times staff writers Rachel Abramowitz, Elaine Dutka and R. Kinsey Lowe contributed to this report.