It’s been over 20 years since The Passion of the Christ stormed the box office and became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.
Since then, director Mel Gibson and Jesus star Jim Caviezel have been planning Passion of the Christ 2, a sequel based on the Resurrection.
In recent years the actor has been teasing that the new film will be the “biggest film in world history” and now his filmmaking collaborator has given a big update, including a new title.
Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Gibson said he hopes to start shooting “The Resurrection of the Christ” in 2026.
He shared: “I’m hoping next year sometime. There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it.”
The 69-year-old has been working on a “very ambitious” script with his brother and Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace for the last seven years. He teased: “It’s the resurrection story, but it’s not linear because it’s hard to understand so it’s gotta be put in a framework where you answer a few other questions as well, and you have to juxtapose the event itself against everything else so that it makes some kind of sense in a bigger picture… There’s some crazy stuff… and I think in order to really tell the story properly you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go to Hell. You need to go to Sheol.”
Gibson also confirmed the narrative would stretch all the way from Satan’s rebellion at the Fall in Genesis to the death of the Apostle John. He ended up living in exile on the island of Patmos, where he wrote Revelation, the last book of the Bible, about the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgement and the dawning of the New Creation.
Gibson teased that he wants the upcoming movie to “show that nobody dies for a lie” as John was the only one of the Apostles not to be killed for his faith in Christ. Rogan, who recently discussed the historicity of the Resurrection with Christian apologist Wesley Huff, asked the filmmaker if he actually believes that Christ rose from the dead after his crucifixion.
The Hollywood star replied: “I do believe. I think as a child one accepts things on faith, because you’re raised by people who are nice to you and they believe it and my Dad was a pretty smart guy. He was like Mensa smart… And I still have that faith, but as I got older I came to it through intellect and through reading and putting things together in accounts.”
On his The Resurrection of the Christ movie, Gibson also added: “I don’t have a start date. I just have to begin pre-production and see what happens. It’s just going to roll in its own time. It’s taking its own time. I thought it was late. It’s taking too long. But it’s probably just right. It’s when it’s supposed to be…
“It’s about finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious. I think I have ideas about how to do that and how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to require a lot of planning and I’m not wholly sure I can pull it off to tell you the truth, it’s super ambitious. But I’ll take a crack at it because that’s what you got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right?”