Mel Gibson Shares New Details About Long-Awaited ‘Passion of the Christ’ Sequel

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Mel Gibson recently shared that his upcoming two-part sequel to 2004's "The Passion of the Christ" will look and even sound different from the box-office hit. That’s because the upcoming two-part sequel will feature English dialogue and a non-linear narrative structure.

Speaking to Collider at Fan Expo Boston, an annual pop culture convention earlier this month, Gibson explained why telling the resurrection story of Jesus Christ in a non-linear style goes beyond an artistic choice.

"So you can't just tell the linear story that way," he explained. "It's like, OK, you have to juxtapose the actual event against many other actual events in order to grasp the significance of it, so it's another jigsaw puzzle. It's not linear."

The Oscar winner also explained his reasoning to use English for "Resurrection” over the previous style of Aramaic and Latin in “Passion,” amid potential pushback, The Christian Post reported.

"Sometimes you can't afford to do that, like the 'Resurrection' films, parts one and two. They're both in English because the subject matter and just the theological download you have to go through is so complex that I don't think people would like to have to read it in subtitles in a foreign language," Gibson said. "You want to be able to digest it straight away. So I tailored the material to fit the audience, and I think having it in the vernacular would be better for it."

“The Resurrection” will be released in two parts: "Resurrection: Part One" is scheduled for May 6, 2027, while "Part Two" will arrive May 25, 2028. The award-winner also revealed that the upcoming, highly anticipated sequels were filmed concurrently in Italy’s capital city and are now in the post-production stage.

“Yeah, I shot them both in Rome and together at the same time. So now I'm in post-production," the “Braveheart” actor said. "I'm editing and doing visual effects. It's pretty crazy. I don't think it's anything anyone would expect."

Additionally, Gibson stated that he and two others spent a lot of time working on the sequel's script. Gibson, "Braveheart" screenwriter Randall Wallace, as well as his brother, Donal Gibson, spent nearly a decade creating the script for “Resurrection.”

"We sat down, and we rolled our sleeves up, and it was a very difficult subject because anybody gets murdered in public and then under his own strength and power comes back to life, and there's not just a biblical account," Gibson mentioned. "There are 17 separate secular historians that attest the same kind of thing. So it's not a fairy tale, and the object is to make it believable and understandable at the same time, and it's a very difficult thing to understand."

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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.