Award-winning British documentary filmmaker turned successful director of American TV and film. As a fictional filmmaker, Gibson displayed an affinity for music-oriented stories. His feature directorial debut, "Breaking Glass" (1980), was a rock'n'roll rise-and-fall saga set in the London punk scene. The lavish HBO biopic "The Josephine Baker Story" (1991) netted Gibson an Emmy and a bride (his leading lady, Lynn Whitfield). His modest entry in the 1993 summer movie sweepstakes was the surprisingly successful Tina Turner biopic, "What's Love Got to Do With It" starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne.
Gibson was originally trained to become a medical doctor but shifted to filmmaking, joining the BBC as a scientific documentary filmmaker. He was one of the producers of "Horizon", an acclaimed BBC series that ran for over 15 years. Hailed as the finest science program on British TV, the series featured self-contained documentaries rather than magazine-style compilations and provided an excellent showcase for Gibson's science films, as well as the the model for PBS's "Nova".
Gibson left documentary filmmaking to make his American debut with the disappointing sequel, "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" (1986). He fared better on TV, helming several high-profile TV movies and miniseries including "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story" (HBO, 1989) and "Drug Wars: The Camarena Story" (NBC, 1990).