'Passion of the Christ 2': What We Know About Mel Gibson's Jesus Sequel

Twenty years after Mel Gibson brought The Passion of the Christ to movie theaters, he's confirmed a sequel is coming, and it could end up being an "acid trip" of a movie.

The 2004 religious film, starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ in the final 12 hours of his life, was a commercial success and also scored three Oscar nominations. However, it proved divisive with critics, received criticism from religious scholars and was also accused of antisemitism from various sectors.

A sequel has been rumored to be in the works since June 2016 when writer Randall Wallace told the Hollywood Reporter that he and Gibson were working on a script. In 2018, Caviezel told Breitbart that he'd seen the draft for The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, and believed it would be "the biggest film in world history."

Now in 2023, Gibson has finally spoken out publicly about the sequel for the first time.

Speaking to Outstanding Screenplays in April, Gibson said The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection was coming soon. "You can't do it lightly and quickly. You have to really consider what it is that you need to show in order to be poignant," he said.

Gibson continued: "It can't be linear. You have to have many things to juxtapose against one another, even from different time periods, in order to illustrate what something means in a more full way. And I think it's going to be a real jigsaw puzzle to do."

He also confirmed that his movie would see Caviezel reprise his role as Jesus Christ.

"I have two scripts, and one of them is very structured and a very strong script, and kind of more what you'd expect, and the other is like an acid trip. Because you're going into other realms and stuff. I mean, you're in hell, and you're watching the angels fall. It's like, crazy," Gibson told Outstanding Screenplays.

Newsweek has reached out to Gibson's representatives via email for further comment.

Caviezel, who is also the star of the movie Sound of Freedom, recently spoke about the prospect of returning to the role of Jesus Christ on the Shawn Ryan Show on YouTube.

He spoke at length about his experience of playing the figurehead of Christianity, before being asked when the sequel may finally be made.

"I asked him [Mel Gibson] would you be ready to go in January? He said 'yeah, maybe.' I said 'how about the end of Fall?' He said 'Yeah, maybe.' So who knows... He's been on this for a long, long time.

"It will be the biggest film in history. It might be two films, maybe three, but I think it's two," Caviezel said, confirming the story could be turned into a double feature or trilogy.

The Passion of the Christ, released in 2004, marked Gibson's debut as a writer, producer and director on a single project. With a budget of $30 million, it made $612 million at the box office, despite backlash from some quarters.

At the time, the Jewish international non-governmental organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) spoke out against Gibson's movie. "For filmmakers to do justice to the biblical accounts of the passion, they must complement their artistic vision with sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews and Judaism," the ADL said ahead of the movie's release in 2004.

After obtaining an advanced copy of the script, a joint statement from the ADL and the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called it "one of the most troublesome texts, relative to anti-Semitic potential, that any of us had seen in 25 years."