There have been countless literary adaptations over the years that have done huge business at the box office and gone on to spawn franchises, but it would be fair to say that a lot of people weren’t expecting the Bible to be one of them.
Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was a global phenomenon when it was released back in 2004, and went on to earn over $610 million worldwide, with seemingly every member of the movie’s target audience heading out to the theater to see it on the big screen. Even sixteen years later, it remains the seventh highest-grossing R-rated movie ever made behind only Joker, both Deadpool flicks, The Matrix Reloaded, It and Logan, all of which were studio blockbusters with massive built-in appeal. That speaks volumes about how certain projects specifically targeted to a certain demographic can bring people out in droves, regardless of genre or content.
A follow-up has been in the works for a long time now, and it was announced in 2016 that Gibson was set to reunite with Braveheart writer Randall Wallace for the tentatively-titled The Resurrection of the Christ. We haven’t heard much about it since, but in a recent interview, star Jim Caviezel gave an update on the status of the movie, and he certainly didn’t hold back when it came to his opinion on the most recent draft of the script.
“It’s going to be a masterpiece. It’s going to be the biggest film in world history, I believe it will be based on what I feel in my heart. It’s so imperative in this time, these films can’t be made now. The films they make are Marvel Comics movies. You’ll see Superman. You won’t see Jesus… I got to play the greatest superhero there ever was.”
Ironically, Caviezel was reportedly in the running to play the Man of Steel in Superman Returns before Brandon Routh was cast, and despite the comparisons between the two title characters by the actor, it seems unlikely that a sequel to The Passion of the Christ is going to be taking any cues from the comic book genre in order to sell tickets when it eventually gets made.
