Randall Wallace has watched Mel Gibson take on some of Hollywood’s most ambitious stories over their three decades of friendship and collaboration. But when Gibson first told him he wanted to make “The Passion of the Christ,” Wallace sensed immediately that this one was different.
“What I understood most of all was how deeply … he related to the experience of Jesus on the cross,” the 76-year-old screenwriter told The Christian Post. “It was a sacred moment.”
“I saw that he had a vision, and I also saw that it was a vision that maybe other people could not yet see,” he said. “It was the calling of his life at that moment to help other people see what he had seen.”
Now, as “The Passion of the Christ” returns to theaters more than 20 years after becoming a cultural phenomenon, Wallace reflected on how the film serves as a starting point for Gibson’s next undertaking: “The Resurrection of the Christ.”
The newly remastered 4K version of “The Passion” is playing nationwide from Sept. 10-17 and includes a behind-the-scenes preview of “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One,” which opens May 6, 2027.
Wallace, Gibson’s longtime friend and collaborator who wrote “Braveheart” and worked with him on “We Were Soldiers” and “Hacksaw Ridge,” is also a writer on “The Resurrection of the Christ.” The filmmaker, who studied religion and attended seminary at Duke University, said “The Passion” was one of the first films to tangibly depict the magnitude of the crucifixion.
“It’s so easy to think of spirituality as something disconnected from our physical lives, and to think of Jesus as a teacher, an idea, an abstraction, something beyond our everyday experience,” he said. “What Mel did with ‘The Passion’ was to show us the real-world humanity of Jesus, and that His suffering on the cross was physical, and that we could all relate to it.”
“Mel reminded us all that the crucifixion is a human historical event, full of pain and passion, and that pain and passion is met with love and hope,” he said.
First released in 2004, “The Passion of the Christ” starred Jim Caviezel as Jesus of Nazareth and depicted the final 12 hours of Christ’s life, including His trial, crucifixion and resurrection. The film became a cultural phenomenon, earned three Academy Award nominations and held the distinction of being the highest-grossing domestic R-rated film for 20 years.
Wallace said its legacy, however, extends beyond the faith-based film industry and entirely changed the landscape of filmmaking in general.
“Honestly, I believe that what Mel did with ‘The Passion’ is that he elevated not only what we might call faith-related filmmaking, but actually all filmmaking,” he said.
“One of the things that Mel did is he took the greatest story ever told and brought to it the skills and the commitment that the greatest artists of all time have done,” Wallace said, comparing Gibson’s approach to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.
“He has brought to filmmaking what they brought to their canvases and their carvings,” he added. “He’s dealing with the same transcendent themes with the same commitment.”
Wallace, who grew up Baptist, has had a front-row seat to Gibson’s filmmaking career for more than three decades. The two first worked together on the 1995 epic “Braveheart,” which Wallace wrote and Gibson directed and starred in.
Wallace said he was then an unknown screenwriter while Gibson was among the world’s biggest movie stars, yet Gibson treated him “as a brother.” Quickly, the two discovered they shared a spiritual foundation. Years later, while the two were flying to the White House for a screening of “We Were Soldiers” during the George W. Bush administration, Gibson began telling Wallace about “The Passion.”
And now, two decades later, “The Resurrection of the Christ” will move the story beyond the suffering depicted in “The Passion” and into more expansive territory.
In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Gibson revealed that the follow-up will explore supernatural realms surrounding Christ’s death and resurrection, including Hell, fallen angels and the origin of Satan. Jaakko Ohtonen will portray Jesus in the new films.
“You’re going to different realms, of course,” Gibson told CP. “I mean, you’ll be in the firmament before the creation. You’ll be in the Hell of the just, and then you’ll be in the Hell of the damned. And so it jumps around a little bit. It doesn’t just stay on the planet here. It gets around.”
“One can look at these things and go, ‘I wonder what was around that?’ and try and analyze those things and make suppositions about what might have been,” Gibson said. “Not to go against anything in orthodox teaching but to enhance, I think, what’s there for everyone to see and hopefully they’ll be surprised by some of those revelations.”
Wallace stressed that Resurrection presents an even greater challenge than depicting the crucifixion because it confronts audiences with Christianity’s supernatural claim about what happened after Jesus died.
“It’s the central event of history, and the most mind-blowing event of history,” Wallace said, adding that Gibson understood from the beginning that taking on that story would carry spiritual challenges.
“There are plenty of people that believe Jesus was crucified, but … the idea that He physically rose from the dead, that He rose from the dead in anything like what we would call reality, is a way bigger proposition,” Wallace said.
“To attempt to tell that story would mean that your soul was going to be sifted.”
Yet Wallace said what he has witnessed in Gibson during the making of “The Resurrection” has been a filmmaker experience “a kind of rising joy.”
“He’s doing what he most loves doing, and doing the thing he knows he’s been called to do,” Wallace said. “He’s doing the healthiest thing. And I believe angels watch us when we are in moments of grace.”
“The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One” is scheduled to open exclusively in theaters May 6, 2027, followed by “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part Two” on May 25, 2028.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]
