Mel Gibson’s Resurrection Film Begins Production in Rome
“The Resurrection of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s sequel to “The Passion of the Christ,” begins this summer at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, according to “Variety.” The original was the largest-grossing independent film of all time.
Cinecittà’s new Studio 22 facility will serve as the film’s main hub. Like “The Passion,” which also was based at Cinecittà, “Resurrection” will shoot in the ancient southern Italian town of Matera. Gibson also is expected to shoot the sequel in other ancient Southern Italian rural locations, including Ginosa, Gravina Laterza and Altamura.
Caviezel returns as Jesus while Maia Morgenstern, who played Jesus’ mother in “The Passion,” and Francesco De Vito, who portrayed Peter, also are believed to be on board, according to IMDB.
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Gibson, speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast in January, said he has “never read anything like” the script, which he cowrote with “Braveheart” screenwriter Randall Wallace. Gibson discusses narrative with the “National Catholic Register,” saying “Resurrection” is “not a linear narrative,” adding that “you have to juxtapose the central event that I’m trying to tell with everything else around it in the future, in the past and in other realms, and that’s kind of getting a little sci-fi out there. 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.”
Production starts August with Gibson describing the film as “very ambitious” and saying the narrative moves from “the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.”
“It’s about finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious,” he said. “I think I have ideas about how to do that and how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to require a lot of planning and I’m not wholly sure I can pull it off; to tell you the truth. It’s super ambitious. But I’ll take a crack at it, because that’s what you’ve got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right?”
–Alan Goforth
