Mel Gibson has been secretly working on a sequel to his 2004 religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, it was recently revealed to The Hollywood Reporter.
The award-winning script-writer and director Randall Wallace was the one who made the leak, saying he’s working with Gibson on a script for the project and that it’s become too big for them to keep it a secret any longer.
Wallace says the Passion sequel will tell the story of the Resurrection of Christ. “I always wanted to tell this story,” Wallace, who studied religion at Duke University, told The Hollywood Reporter. “The Passion is the beginning and there’s a lot more story to tell.”
The original Passion of the Christ was funded entirely by Gibson and his company Icon Productions, costing around $45 million for production and marketing. But it brought in $612 million worldwide, making it the most successful independent film ever, the highest grossing religious film ever, and the highest grossing R-rated film ever at the time.
Wallace and Gibson previously worked together on Braveheart, for which Wallace was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay and Gibson won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. Most recently, Wallace was writer and director for the Christian-themed Heaven Is For Real.
Wallace credited the evangelical Protestant community with pushing them to do a sequel. “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.”
There is no timeline yet for when the movie might be made or released.
What do you think of them making a sequel to The Passion? Let us know in the comments!
[See also: Jim Caviezel’s Stunning Testimony from Playing Jesus in “The Passion”]
[See also: The Final Passion of Mother Angelica on Good Friday, Revealed by EWTN Priest]