What happens when a hapless Nazi accountant meets a concentration camp full of surprises? That is just the question that director Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Jurassic Park) and actor Mel Gibson (Mad Max, Maverick) are looking to answer in their newly announced comedy/drama Klaus’ Concentration Camp Conundrum, a movie that the whole family (even the disowned neo-Nazi) can love.

“I have wanted to work with Mel ever since that time he got drunk and blamed everything on the Jews,” said Spielberg at a joint press conference Monday. “His novel vision of a world controlled by a secret cabal of which I was ostensibly a member just about knocked my socks off. I wasn’t sure what kind of project it would be, but I knew that we had to collaborate on something.”

Spielberg reportedly got in touch with Gibson and proposed a joint project. They went through “several iterations,” says Spielberg, until they narrowed their ideas down to a movie that combines, in Spielberg’s words, “the best of both of our obsessions with Jewish people.”

Gibson agreed: “I was a little dubious, because I absolutely hated Munich, but then I saw Schindler’s List, which was hilarious, and I knew that a partnership was long due.” Gibson will play the role of Klaus, a Nazi accountant totaling up concentration camp expenditures, who must learn to partially or even completely overcome his feelings about Jewish people when one of them kidnaps Klaus's daughter in his own personal concentration camp. All signs point towards a blockbuster. “I’m always trying to add more anti-Semitic stuff, and he’s always trying to cram in a bunch of Jewey themes, so it’s been tough finding a balance, but I think we’ve got a hit on our hands,” said Gibson.

The movie is due to be released Summer 2008.