Mel Gibson has been planning a sequel to The Passion of the Christ for years, and the actor-director recently discussed the project on Joe Rogan’s podcast, revealing that filming could begin next year. The second installment will focus on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, presenting a transcendent story, but Gibson also wants to delve deeper into Judeo-Christian mythology. Christ will once again be portrayed by Jim Caviezel, who will be digitally de-aged since the sequel picks up immediately after the events of the 2004 film (“He descended into hell, and on the third day, He rose again from the dead”).
Gibson co-wrote the original Passion script with Benedict Fitzgerald, basing it on the biblical Gospels. For the sequel, he worked for seven years with Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace and his brother, Donal Gibson, to craft the story. “Hopefully, we’ll start filming sometime next year. It takes a lot of planning because it’s like an LSD trip. I’ve never read anything like it before,” said the veteran filmmaker, who won an Oscar for directing Braveheart.
The director described the film as highly ambitious. Its plot will span from the fall of the angels, including Lucifer, as detailed in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible, to the death of the last apostle. The title will be The Resurrection of the Christ. “My brother, Randall, and I all worked on it, so some great minds have come together, but there’s some crazy stuff in it. To properly tell the story, you really need to start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in a completely different place, in another realm. You have to go to hell, you have to go to Sheol,” Gibson explained.
“The key is finding a way to make it neither cheesy nor overly clichéd. I have ideas about how to achieve that, how to evoke emotion through visuals and cinematography. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It won’t be easy—it requires a tremendous amount of planning, and honestly, I’m not entirely sure I can pull it off. It’s very ambitious. But I’m going to try, because that’s what you do, right?” Gibson mused.
Gibson’s latest directorial work, Flight Risk, is set to premiere in U.S. theaters at the end of January.
