The long-awaited follow-up to the 2004 hit “The Passion of the Christ” will be a departure of sorts from the original, according to actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson.
“The Resurrection of the Christ,” which has wrapped principal photography and is in post-production, will include a shift to English dialogue and a non-linear narrative, both of which stand in contrast to “Passion,” which netted more than $610 million at the box office and became one of the most successful independent films ever made.
In an appearance earlier this month at Fan Expo Boston, an annual pop culture convention, Gibson told Collider that both parts of “Resurrection” were filmed simultaneously in Rome. “Yeah, I shot them both in Rome and together at the same time. So now I’m in post-production,” he said. “I’m editing and doing visual effects. It’s pretty crazy. I don’t think it’s anything anyone would expect.”
Filming concluded ahead of schedule after 134 days of production across multiple locations in Italy, including Rome, Matera, Bari, Ginosa, Craco and Brindisi, according to a statement Lionsgate previously provided to The Christian Post.
While the project wasn’t initially envisioned as a two-part traditional sequel, Gibson said he spent nearly a decade with “Braveheart” screenwriter Randall Wallace, along with his brother, Donal Gibson, on the script for “Resurrection.”
“We sat down and we rolled our sleeves up, and it was a very difficult subject because anybody gets murdered in public and then under his own strength and power comes back to life, and there’s not just a biblical account,” Gibson stated. “There are 17 separate secular historians that attest the same kind of thing. So it’s not a fairy tale, and the object is to make it believable and understandable at the same time, and it’s a very difficult thing to understand.”
He also told Collider the choice to tell the story of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in a non-linear style was more than just an artistic choice. “So you can’t just tell the linear story that way,” he explained. “It’s like, OK, you have to juxtapose the actual event against many other actual events in order to grasp the significance of it, so it’s another jigsaw puzzle. It’s not linear.”
Gibson said that while splitting the story into parts was already baked into the original screenplay, he believes each film, much like the “Godfather” trilogy, will stand on its own merits.
“There’s ‘Part One’ and ‘Part Two,’ and they’re distinct,” he said. “I think they stand alone as individual pieces, but they do complete one another. So that’s good.”
Anticipating pushback over his choice to use English for “Resurrection,” a departure from the style of “Passion,” which was told primarily in Aramaic and Latin, Gibson said the subject matter was too important to risk bogging down the audience in various translations.
“Sometimes you can’t afford to do that, like the ‘Resurrection’ films, parts one and two. They’re both in English because the subject matter and just the theological download you have to go through is so complex that I don’t think people would like to have to read it in subtitles in a foreign language,” Gibson said. “You want to be able to digest it straight away. So I tailored the material to fit the audience, and I think having it in the vernacular would be better for it.”
Made on a reported $30 million budget, “Passion” grossed more than $610 million worldwide and remains one of the highest-grossing R-rated films of all time. Gibson has previously characterized the new script as exploring themes including Hell, Sheol, the fall of angels, and the origin of Satan, describing it at one point as “an acid trip.”
Lionsgate has set release dates for the films. “Resurrection: Part One” is scheduled for May 6, 2027, coinciding with Ascension Day, while “Part Two” will arrive May 25, 2028, during Memorial Day weekend and another Ascension Day observance. The dates replace an earlier plan that would have released Part One on Good Friday, March 26, 2027, and Part Two just 40 days later on Ascension Day; Lionsgate pushed the two releases further apart given the scale of both productions.
“Mel is a true visionary with an artist’s eye for scale and a storyteller’s instinct for emotional truth,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Adam Fogelson said in a statement announcing the completed production. “Mel has crafted a film of extraordinary ambition that audiences worldwide have been waiting to experience for over 20 years.”
Gibson, in the same statement, called the project more than just a film. “This is far more than a film to me,” he said. “It’s a mission I’ve carried for over twenty years to tell what I believe is the most important story in human history.”
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected].
