If Mel Gibson gets his way, he’ll shoot his long-gestating “Passion Of The Christ” sequel next year.
Deadline reports that the actor noted his preferred timeline for the movie during an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “I’m hoping next year sometime,” said Gibson. “There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it.” Gibson co-writes the script for the film with brother Donal and “Braveheart” scribe Randall Wallace, a project they developed together over seven years. In the interview, Gibson also confirmed the movie’s title: “The Resurrection Of The Christ.”
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Gibson called the entire project “very ambitious,” with a narrative that covers “the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.” “My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff,” he continued. “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 wants Jim Caviezel to return as Jesus for the project. But since it’s been 21 years since “The Passion Of The Christ” hit theaters, Gibson admitted to Rogan that he would need “a few techniques” for Caviezel to look the part. It’s about finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious,” he said of using CGI de-aging in the movie. “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.”
That and many other challenges may derail “The Resurrection Of The Christ,” but Gibson wants to give the film a shot. “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,” he said of the project. “But I’ll take a crack at it because that’s what you got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right?”
So will Gibson get to shoot this passion project (no pun intended)? The once disgraced actor is more or less out of Hollywood jail now, no longer persona non grata after several controversies. But he’s directed just two movies in the past decade: “Hacksaw Ridge,” which cemented his Tinseltown redemption, and “Flight Risk,” in theaters on January 24. If “Flight Risk” is somehow a hit for Lionsgate, maybe they’ll shell out funds for “Resurrection.” But Gibson, given his reputation, most likely faces an uphill battle to get his sequel made. We’ll see what happens.