movies

It can be difficult to grasp, from the vantage point of 20 years later, just how massive Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ was back in 2004. Releasing in theaters in February, and then sticking around for more than two months (to say nothing of its various recuts and re-releases), the film made more than $600 million at the box office, quickly becoming the most successful R-rated movie of all time. (A title it only lost this past summer, as Deadpool & Wolverine found at least one way they were, in fact, bigger than Jesus.) And now, it’s apparently coming back.

This is per Consequence, reporting on a piece printed in Italpress, which states that Gibson is reportedly in Malta at the moment, holding conversations with Maltese authorities about using the island nation as a filming location for a new movie: The Passion Of The Christ: Resurrection, with an eye toward beginning filming in 2025.

Neither Gibson, nor star Jim Caviezel, who’s set to return for the sequel, have been shy about their ambitions to get The Passion Of The Christ 2 made. Gibson initially announced the project back in 2016, and Caviezel made his own enthusiasm for the return clear in 2018, saying he expected the movie to be “The biggest film in history.” Gibson even gave a glimpse at plot details in 2022, when he suggested that his script for the movie was less grounded than the first film, which got a lot of its appeal from being a straightforward—if brutally violent—depiction of the story of Christ. “That’s kind of getting a little sci-fi out there,” Gibson noted of his scripts, saying the film will partially take place in “the past and in other realms.”