Mel Gibson is back at the passion-stirring, taking on another hot-button topic: the Holocaust.

The Oscar winner, who took heat over his depiction of Jews in his God, guts and gore movie, The Passion of the Christ, is developing a TV movie for ABC via his television production company, Con Artists, that is based on a survivor's tale.

The project, which could air as early as next year, will be adapted from the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose Christian hubby hid her from the Nazis, but who lost several family members in the concentration camps. The deal was first reported by the New York Times and Daily Variety.

Of course, those who followed the controversy that dogged The Passion of the Christ two years ago, when Jewish groups attacked the film for being anti-Semitic, will no doubt recall that Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, is on the record as stating that the Holocaust was exaggerated and that the Lethal Weapon star has never publicly refuted his dad's statements.

But that doesn't seem to bother the suits at the Alphabet net.

In fact, after being pitched the project by independent producer Daniel Sladek, it was ABC who courted Gibson's company about producing the project.

"Controversy's publicity, and vice versa," Quinn Taylor, ABC's senior vice president in charge of long form programming, told the New York Times.

According to Taylor, network executives had already turned down a proposal by Con Artists president Nancy Cotton to do a film on the Holocaust, but quickly sparked to the Van Beek tale because its core love story that had elements akin to ABC's successful 2001 telefilm Anne Frank.

In her book, Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death, Van Beek tells of the harrowing journey of her and her husband, Felix. They fled Holland on a passenger ship bound for Chile that was sunk by a German mine. They managed to return to their homeland in 1940; once home, Felix and friends were able to shelter Flory from the Nazis for three years.

Sladek first learned of Van Beek's story through his father, who as a child survived the Holocaust by hiding in Slovakia and who is friends with Van Beek family.

"I think that what ABC wants out of this is to build the biggest billboard imaginable in order to get everyone logically interested to tune in and watch this," the 40-year-old producer told the Times.

That means transforming Van Beek's story into an television event that will appeal to Mel's Passion-nate fan base.

"It is a tremendous nod to the non-Jewish partisans, the citizens of Holland, who helped this couple along the way again and again and again, without any reason other than being human, doing the right thing," Slkadek continued. "It's a great bow to the compassionate Christians, the non-Jewish community. And there's a definite link to that community, through Con Artists, because of Passion."

ABC has hired Profiler writer Cynthia Saunders to handle the script. Until executives receive a draft, it's unknown whether the movie will run two hours or four. Network executives are reportedly pressing for the longer running time so they can transform the project into a miniseries.

Gibson was unavailable for comment. He's currently in Mexico shooting Apocalypto, an epic for Disney set in early Mayan times. It's not yet known whether he will even take an executive producer credit, since the driving force behind the project is reportedly Cotton.

Gibson is also reportedly been developing another film set in the Holy Land, this one about the Jewish freedom fighters the Maccabees, who rebel against their Roman occupiers and are the reason Jews everywhere celebrate Hanukkah.

As for his critics, who think his participation in Van Beek's story might be detrimental, Gibson is getting some support from unexpected quarters.

"I don't know him, all I know is he's a staunch Catholic and the people who saved our lives are Catholic," Van Beek, now in her early '80s and living in Newport Beach, Massachusetts, told the Times.

But when asked about the controversial viewpoints of Gibson's father, she was more circumspect.

"I respect everybody's beliefs," she said. "I know his father doesn't believe in the Holocaust--but maybe when there's money involved, maybe they don't care. His father will probably say this is not real, this is a novel."

Or a movie. If all goes according to plan, the Holocaust project is expected to air sometime in the 2006-07 television season.