Oscar-winning director Mel Gibson’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2004 box office smash, The Passion of the Christ, will arrive in two parts in The Year of Our Lord 2027.
The first part will open on Good Friday — March 26, 2027. The second part will arrive 40 days later on Ascension Day, or Thursday, May 6, 2027.
After years of delays, what will be called The Resurrection of the Christ starts filming in Italy next month. Jim Caviezel is set to return as Jesus of Nazareth.
The Passion of the Christ remains one of the most successful movies in history. Shot on a $30 million budget, none of the fascists who run the left-wing studios would distribute it. A small distributor eventually stepped in and the film went on to gross $612 million. For more than a decade, it retained the record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history.
The Passion ended its remarkable (and remarkably well told) story with Christ’s crucifixion and a glimpse of His resurrection three days later. The Resurrection of Christ will not only tell the story of Christ’s 40 days on Earth before his ascension into Heaven, but according to reports, it will “follow the Son of God into the spiritual realms for the Harrowing of Hell. The ‘crazy acid trip’ [Gibson’s description] movie will span the entire Bible from the fall of Satan prior to creation in Genesis to the Apostle John’s vision of the Second Coming in Revelation.”
In a statement, Gibson said:
Lionsgate’s brave, innovative spirit and nimble, can-do attitude have inspired me for a long time, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect distributor for The Resurrection of the Christ. I’ve enjoyed working with Adam and the team several times over recent years. I know the clever ingenuity, passion, and ambition the entire team commits to their projects and I’m confident they will bring everything they can to the release of this movie.
Sounds much more ambitious and expensive than The Passion, and I can’t wait to see it.
The overwhelming success of The Passion, which caught insulated, Christian-hating Hollywood off guard, sent out a long overdue message: tens of millions of Christians are starved for content that tells our story with respect and represents our values. This was always obvious, but Hollywood played dumb through mutual agreement and the studios ignored us.
That $612 million gross broke the blacklist and ever since we’ve received a steady supply of Christian content over the last 20 years, culminating in another worldwide success: The Chosen is a legitimate phenomenon that is already five seasons into its expected seven-season run, telling the story of Jesus Christ through the eyes of his 12 Apostles.
What I’m waiting for is for someone to bring the Acts of the Apostles to life. That particular book of the Bible follows the 11 surviving Apostles as they spread the Gospel throughout the known world. All but two or three (depending on which history you read) were executed for doing so, and knowing that no one dies for a lie makes these stories all the more remarkable.
Between The Chosen and The Passion, Christians are blessed with exceptional and faithful retellings of the greatest story ever told.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
