Mel Gibson is bringing back that original flavor Jesus for The Passion Of The Christ 2
In a move that, we can’t help pointing out, was pretty clearly cribbed from this summer’s Justice League, star Jim Caviezel has confirmed that his Jesus Christ will be back for The Passion Of The Christ 2, even though he totally died in the first one. Caviezel—who’s currently gearing up for a different Christian epic set in the same era, Paul, Apostle Of Christ—has confirmed that he’ll be returning as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s follow-up to his 2004 religious blockbuster.
Gibson announced the proposed sequel back in 2016, at least in part as an effort to capitalize on the recent rise of niche Christian film-making projects. (Which were, in turn, presaged by the success of the first Passion, which mobilized churchgoers en masse to hit the theaters.) Caviezel, at least, seems hyped for Gibson’s project, telling USA Today, “I won’t tell you how he’s going to go about it. But I’ll tell you this much, the film he’s going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. It’s that good.” (Which might, in turn, be the first instance of pop culture hubris in which someone declared that Jesus was bigger than anything else, rather than the other way around.)