A follow-up film to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ would be called The Resurrection, the actor and director revealed last weekend.
Speaking to evangelist Greg Laurie at the three night SoCal Harvest Crusade in Anaheim, California, Mr Gibson said he was in discussions with Randall Wallace, the writer of Braveheart, about a sequel to the graphic 2004 film which starred Jim Caviezel as Jesus.
“We’re talking about that,” he said. “Of course, that’s a huge undertaking and, you know, it’s not the Passion 2, I mean 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 very simple rendering of it. I mean we can all read what happened but in order to really experience and explore probably deeper meanings of what it’s all about is going to take some doing. And Randall Wallace is up to the task – as well as brilliant writer, he’s a great director…”
Mr Gibson told Mr Laurie he made The Passion of the Christ to “illustrate the extent of the sacrifice Christ made”. “I just wanted to put that on film to give people maybe a new look and to sort of bring another theological perspective to it that perhaps they haven’t thought of before.”
The Passion of the Christ reportedly made more than $US600 million from a $US30 million budget and was the highest grossing religious film in cinematic history. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Mr Gibson’s latest film – the first he’s directed since Apocalypto in 2006 – is Hacksaw Ridge which tells the story of conscientious objector and US Army medic Desmond Doss who won a Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Pacific theatre during World War II. It comes out later this year.
More than 100,000 people attended the three day evangelism event last weekend.
