Filming is reportedly set to get underway in the next few months for the highly-anticipated sequel for “Passion of the Christ” with Mel Gibson working on multiple drafts of the screenplay.
The 67-year-old actor, director and producer has reportedly been working on the “The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection,” a sequel to the hit 2004 Gibson film, for nearly a decade, CBN News.com reported.
“Gibson has been hard at work on the screenplay with ‘Braveheart’ screenwriter Randall Wallace,” Veteran film journalist Jordan Ruimy shared.
“There have already been six drafts,” Ruimy added. “‘Resurrection’ would focus on the twenty-four hours encompassing Jesus’ passion and the events that occurred three days between his crucifixion and resurrection.”
Jim Caviezel will reportedly be reprising his role of Jesus along with several other original stars like Maia Morgenstern as Mary, Christo Jivkov as John, and Francesco De Vito as Peter, the outlet noted.
'More story to tell': Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ sequel to begin filming in 2023https://t.co/foVyyWeXcW
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 8, 2023
In 2016, Wallace told the Hollywood Reporter that the “evangelical community considers The Passion the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood, and they kept telling us that they think a sequel will be even bigger.”
“I always wanted to tell this story … The Passion is the beginning, and there’s a lot more story to tell,” he added.
Gibson previously talked about how big the subject was and said it was going to take some time to tell the story, the Christian Post noted.
“It’s called The Resurrection,” the superstar shared at the time. “Of course, that’s a very big subject and it needs to be looked at because we don’t want to just do a simple rendering of it — you know, read what happened.”
“But in order to read it, experience and explore probably deeper meanings of what it’s about, it’s going to take some doing and Randall Wallace is up to the task,” he added. “He is also, as well as a brilliant writer, he is a great director. He directed ‘We Were Soldiers’ and ‘Heaven is for Real’ and stuff. So, he is a good writer and director.”
The 2004 film was rated R and was a huge success, bringing in more than $600 million on just a $30 million budget, CBN News noted.