Twenty-one years ago, Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ unexpectedly rocked the box office, making over $612 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing R-rated movie for 20 years, having now been surpassed by Deadpool and Wolverine. Now, after much teasing, Mel Gibson has announced that a sequel will begin filming this summer. Entitled The Resurrection of the Christ, the film will begin filming in August in Rome according to Manuela Cacciamani, CEO of Cinecittà Studios. Cinecittà was also the studio where Passion was filmed and Resurrection is expected to return to filming in the town of Matera, as well as other towns such as Gravina Laterza and Altamura.

Despite the long gap between films, Jim Caviezel will be reprising his role as Jesus, with Maia Morgenstern and Francesco De Vito reprising their roles as Mary and Peter. The film will pick up on Easter Sunday, just three days after the events of Passion, which could make hiding the aging of the actors a challenge. Speaking to ComicBook, Gibson remained vague about how he planned to combat the aging difference. “So it’s like, you know, I have ways of dealing with that, because, you know, twenty years ago is [supposed to be] three days later. So it has its own peculiar set of problems, which I think I can solve,” he said. De-aging effects remain one possibility, though their usage would massively increase Resurrection’s budget. Randall Wallace, who co-wrote the script for Resurrection, has stated however that it’s “too early to talk money.”

Gibson has teased a sequel for nearly a decade, telling Stephen Colber in 2016, “It’s more than [the] single event [in the title], it’s an amazing event … and to underpin that with the things around it is really the story. To sort of enlighten what that means.” He went into a little more detail in 2022 during an interview with National Catholic Register, he said the film was “not a linear narrative,” noting that the film could explore other biblical events. “I think in order to really tell the story properly you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go to hell.” He has also spoken about two versions of the script with one that is “a very structured and a very strong script” while the other “is like an acid trip.” The biggest question is whether the film can resurrect the same kind of hit as its predecessor.