The Passion of the Christ 2 plot details, cast & when it’s expected to release

He will rise… in The Passion of the Christ 2, Mel Gibson’s long-awaited sequel that will chronicle Jesus’ resurrection (and some other stuff).

In 2004, Jesus was battered, bruised, bloodied, and crucified on the big screen – and it became the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever in the US. The Passion of the Christ is infamous, but the story isn’t over.

Gibson has been tinkering with a follow-up for nearly 20 years – but a lot has happened since then. The filmmaker was blacklisted after several controversies, and he’s since made a light-footed return to Hollywood; he earned multiple Oscar nominations for Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, and he directed Flight Risk, which will hit cinemas later this month.

Now, he’s ramping up development on The Passion of the Christ sequel, which sounds absolutely bonkers.

Does The Passion of the Christ 2 have a release date?

Newmarket Films

The Passion of the Christ 2 doesn’t have a release date, but Gibson hopes to start filming sometime in 2026, so it could arrive anytime between 2027 and 2028.

Gibson has been working on the script since the mid-2010s, collaborating with his brother and co-writer Randall Wallace. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the original film, first received a draft of the screenplay in 2018. Two years later, he predicted that it’ll be “the biggest film in world history.”

For context, The Passion of the Christ grossed more than $610 million worldwide – adjusted for inflation, that’d be over $1 billion.

However, the film appears to have been pushed back a few times. World of Reel reported that it was set to start shooting in 2023, and he was spotted scouting for filming locations last year, suggesting that production would begin in 2025.

While appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience, Gibson confirmed that the sequel will shoot in 2026 if all goes to plan.

“I don’t have a start date. I just have to begin pre-production and see what happens. It’s just going to roll in its own time. It’s taking its own time. I thought it was late. It’s taking too long. It’s taking too long. But it’s probably just right. It’s when it’s supposed to be,” he explained.

The Passion of the Christ 2 title

Newmarket Films

The Passion of the Christ 2 will be titled… The Resurrection of the Christ.

Before this was confirmed on Rogan’s podcast, the sequel was titled The Passion of the Christ 2: Resurrection, so it’s not a big change.

However, there’s a possibility that the movie will be split into two parts, so it’s unclear if it’d be called The Resurrection of Christ: Part 1 or if there’d be another title for the third film.

Who’s in The Passion of the Christ 2 cast?

Newmarket Films

Jim Caviezel is confirmed to reprise his role as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ 2, but it’s unclear if anyone else from the first film will return.

To jog your memory, this was the cast from the original movie:

• Maia Morgenstern as Mary, the mother of Jesus
• Christo Jivkov as John
• Francesco De Vito as Peter
• Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene
• Mattia Sbragia as Caiaphas
• Toni Bertorelli as Annas ben Seth
• Luca Lionello as Judas Iscariot
• Hristo Naumov Shopov as Pontius Pilate
• Claudia Gerini as Claudia Procles
• Fabio Sartor as Abenader
• Giacinto Ferro as Joseph of Arimathea
• Olek Mincer as Nicodemus

There is an unavoidable question: Jesus’ resurrection takes place almost immediately after his crucifixion, but Caviezel is now over 20 years older. In Gibson’s eyes, that’s not a problem.

“I know it’s 20 years later. It’s supposed to be three days later, but he got 20 years older. I think I have to use a few techniques that they’ve started to get really good… you can actually get some of the same people,” he told Rogan, suggesting the actor may be de-aged with VFX.

Speaking to OЯMI, Caviezel teased: “Mel took me through all of the scenes and I was on the floor crying… it’ll be one of the best things you’ve ever seen. I can’t tell you [when it’s coming out]. If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

What will happen in The Resurrection of Christ?

Newmarket Films

The Resurrection of Christ is about… the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But as Gibson has explained in multiple interviews, that’s not the sole focus of the sequel.

In a 2016 interview with Stephen Colbert, he hinted that it would adapt the Harrowing of Hell, which means we’d see Jesus descend into Hades before his ascension. “It’s more than a single event, it’s an amazing event – and to underpin that with the things around it is really the story,” he said.

“It’s not just about the event, it’s not some sort of chronological telling of just that event. That could be boring… it’s predictable in that, ‘Now we know what happens’, but what are the other things around it that happen?”

Colbert asked if there are any “bad guys”, and Gibson said: “There are… they’re in another realm.”

Gibson also told Greg Laurie that it’s a “huge undertaking… that’s a very big subject. And it needs to be looked at, because we don’t wanna do just a simple rendering of it. We can all read what happened, but in order to really experience and explore probably deeper meanings of what it’s about is gonna take some doing.”

So, what will that entail? Randall Wallace told OЯMI that the resurrection is “the Mount Everest of all human stories in eternity… we’ve gone through different approaches to it.”

Gibson went into more detail in his interview with Rogan. “There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. When we wrote it… I’ve never read anything like it,” he explained.

“My brother and I and Randall [Wallace] all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff. And I think in order to really tell the story properly you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which is you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go Hell. You need to go to Sheol.”

Yes, that means we could see Satan’s origin. As for how that’d be depicted, “I think I have ideas about how to do that and ideas about how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it,” Gibson said.

“It’s not going to be easy and 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 really super ambitious. But I’ll take a crack at it. ‘Cause that’s what you got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right? I think I can get it. But it’s not about me. It’s about something else.”

While The Passion primarily took place over the course of 12 hours, The Resurrection’s scope is enormous. “It’s really ambitious and it goes from the fall of the angels to the death of the last Apostle,” he teased.

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