Though a certain Merc With a Mouth is closing the gap with haste, Mel Gibson’s religious opus The Passion of the Christ remains, to this day, the highest-grossing R-rated movie in Hollywood history with $370 million.
A gruelling and at times difficult to watch portrayal of Jesus Of Nazareth’s final days, it’s a movie that holds a tremendous amount of resonance with the evangelical community. This, coupled with that eye-watering box office cume, has unsurprisingly prompted talk of a direct sequel in the past. And it seems that Mel Gibson is, at the very least, still entertaining the idea of circling back to hallowed ground for The Resurrection.
Chatting to evangelist Greg Laurie (via CP Entertainment) about his second wind – Gibson has lined up Blood Father and Hacksaw Ridge in 2016 in what is fast becoming a bona fide comeback story – here’s the latest status report regarding that Passion of the Christ follow-up from Gibson himself:
“We’re talking about that. Of course, that is a huge undertaking. And you know, it’s not The Passion 2. It’s called The Resurrection. Of course, that’s a very big subject and it needs to be looked at because we don’t want to just do a simple rendering of it — you know, read what happened… But in order to read it, experience and explore probably deeper meanings of what it’s about, it’s going to take some doing and Randall Wallace is up to the task.”
Gibson cautions that it’s still early, early days, with scores of questions – will Jim Caviezel reprise as the messiah? – still to be answered. Upon reflecting on the resounding impact of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, both commercially and in religious circles, the director stated:
“Faith is a real thing. I think that often times, I made the ultimate superhero film in The Passion of the Christ. Someone like Desmond Doss is also a superhero and real superheroes don’t wear spandex and they don’t have a lot of 3-D special effects. But, they do operate on a higher level, on a supernatural level. They actually look and appeal to something greater than themselves and then they do something super human.”
Don’t expect Mel Gibson and Co. to resurrect The Passion of the Christ sequel anytime soon, but conversations are happening. Meanwhile, Gibson’s next directorial effort Hacksaw Ridge will march onto the front lines of the Oscar race on November 4.
