Robert De Niro has walked out of the shoot for Mel Gibson's return to acting, thriller Edge of Darkness, after less than a week due to "creative differences".

Based on the BBC series, Darkness centres on the murder of a young woman and also stars Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts and Bojana Novakovic. De Niro had been set to play an operative sent to the scene of the killing to clean up the evidence. Gibson plays the father of the victim, a detective working in the Boston police department's homicide division.

"Sometimes things don't work out; it's called creative differences," a spokesman for De Niro told Variety.

Casino Royale director Martin Campbell, who also directed the original 1985 miniseries, is in charge of the cameras. Variety says he plans to shoot around De Niro's character until a replacement is found.

Gibson has stayed staunchly behind the cameras over the past few years, having made a name for himself as a director on projects such as The Passion of the Christ and the critically-acclaimed Apocalypto. It has been suggested that he struggled to find acting work following his 2006 arrest for drink-driving and subsequent anti-semitic outburst to police.

In the film, his character uncovers the secret life of his activist daughter while investigating her death. He also stumbles across evidence of a corporate cover-up and government collusion.

The original BBC version starred Bob Peck in the Gibson role, with Joanne Whalley as his daughter. It was set in London, as opposed to Boston and represented a harsh critique of Britain's 1980s nuclear policy under Margaret Thatcher.