Director Mel Gibson unveiled new details about his long-awaited sequel to The Passion of the Christ during a two-hour appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, including the film’s official title: The Resurrection of the Christ.
The sequel will pick up where the 2004 R-rated religious epic left off, focusing on the resurrection of Jesus, portrayed once again by Jim Caviezel. To bring Caviezel back as Jesus more than two decades after the original, Gibson admitted he’ll need to rely on some modern filmmaking techniques, namely CGI de-aging.
“I’m hoping next year sometime,” Gibson said of the film’s potential release date. “There’s a lot required because [the script is] an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it.”
The script, which Gibson co-wrote with his brother and longtime collaborator Randall Wallace (Braveheart), has been seven years in the making. Gibson described it as “super ambitious” and noted that it will delve into far more than just the resurrection.
“My brother and I sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff,” Gibson said. “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.”
The script reportedly aims to chart everything from “the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle,” which Gibson said presents both challenges and opportunities. “Finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious” is critical, he explained, adding, “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.”
While Gibson admitted he’s still unsure whether he can pull it all off, he’s determined to give it his best shot.
“It’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to require a lot of planning. 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?”
