The Resurrection Of The Christ looks to finally start filming this summer, as Mel Gibson plots his Flight Risk follow-up.
It looks like being a special envoy to Hollywood has some perks after all. After being newly-minted as some sort of intermediary between Donald Trump and Tinseltown, it looks like Mel Gibson has finally got a shoot date locked for The Resurrection Of The Christ.
Given that the first film, 2004’s The Passion Of The Christ, is often touted as the most successful independent film of all time (having grossed over $600m at the box office alone), you’d have thought getting a sequel up and running would be a piece of cake. Not so, with The Resurrection Of The Christ suffering no shortage of false dawns over years.
Just last month we covered yet another story that claimed that The Resurrection Of The Christ was all ready to go, but it looks as if this time, the story was indeed accurate. Speaking with Italian financial outlet Il Sole 24 Ore (via Dark Horizons), Rome’s Cinecittà Studios CEO Manuela Cacciamani announced that the project will “begin shooting at the complex this August.”
Read more: BBFC attracts complaints over ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘God’ being used as exclamations in U, PG material
That certainly fits with last month’s report, which claimed that production could begin in March and run through to April and beyond. If the Rome leg of the shoot is now officially in August, it’s either going to be a long production or things have been pushed back one more time.
Either way though, the confirmation of Cinecittà Studios’ hosting the production in August means that after many false starts, the Passion sequel is finally happening and who knows, given how Donald Trump is now an avid supporter of Gibson, perhaps he’ll pop up in a cameo. (We have a perfect idea of who he could play, but we’re happy to let you guess who that might be…)
Jim Caviezel is set to return as Jesus Christ, while Randal Wallace, a regular collaborator of Gibson’s, has penned the script. We’ll bring you more on The Resurrection Of The Christ as we hear it.
