Everybody knows that in movies about Jesus the dude just doesn’t stay dead. You might have thought he’d found peace at the end of The Passion of the Christ, but nah, Mel Gibson is bringing him back to life in a sequel to that movie, and it’ll reportedly focus on the resurrection.
The Guardian reports that Gibson’s collaborator, Randall Wallace, will write the script. They’d previously worked on Braveheart, but Wallace did not have a passion for the previous Christ-based project, apparently, even though he studied religion at Duke University. While there, he fell in love with the story of resurrection, and said, “I always wanted to tell this story. The Passion is the beginning and there’s a lot more story to tell.” Interesting. He also said, “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,” which is also interesting.
There’s no word yet as to whether or not Jim Caviezel will reprise his role as Jesus, and why should he? First of all, he’s got a plum gig as a person who kills a lot of people on the hit TV show Persons of Interest. And second, well, who says Jesus didn’t undergo some kind of physical transformation while he was locked away in that cave?
Anyway, the first Passion made a ton of money back in 2004 — $611 million globally from a $30 million budget — and this one will probably do the same. Only, the Christian Film Complex has grown even larger since then, and maybe the abundance of Christly films will do this sequel in? Or maybe everyone’s appetites are whetted for more Jesus? We’ll find out soon, maybe, unless Gibson decides to leave his project on the dark cave of an unseen hard drive.