Mel Gibson says ‘Resurrection of the Christ’ is unlike ‘what anyone expects’

Filmmaker Mel Gibson revealed new details about his upcoming film The Resurrection of the Christ in a pair of new interviews, saying it will be “bigger” than its 2004 predecessor and unlike “what anyone expects.”

The Resurrection of the Christ, Part One will open in theaters May 7, 2027, as the first of two films, with the second arriving the following May. Together, the two-part epic will explore the events surrounding Jesus’ resurrection and its aftermath.

The films are sequels to The Passion of the Christ, the 2004 movie that became a surprise blockbuster and helped lay the groundwork for today’s booming faith-based film industry. It remains the third highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

Gibson directed that 2004 movie and is helming the two sequels, too.

“I don’t think it’s what anyone expects, but it doesn’t deviate from the truth and the essence of the story,” Gibson said Saturday during a panel at Fan Expo Toronto.

“It’s just an imagining of it. … I mean, the subject matter is so big, and it’s such an impossible event to even comprehend that in order to even begin to understand it, you have to lay the groundwork and juxtapose things together that shouldn’t normally come together – but they do.”

Gibson noted that for fans of the “Big Book” – the Bible – there are “prefigurements and associations over centuries that correlate one with another,” adding that he and his team of writers spent roughly a decade piecing the scripts together. Gibson presumably was referencing the prophecies, foreshadowing and symbolism in the Old Testament that pointed to Jesus and His resurrection.

“It’s complicated, but hopefully will be clear. I hope – we’ll see. We’re struggling with that now. We’re wrestling with it.”

Gibson’s comments leave plenty open to interpretation, yet he has offered hints in the past about the direction of the films. In 2025, he told The Joe Rogan Experience that “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” – indicating that the supernatural realm, including hell itself, will play a role in the films.

In that same interview, Gibson described the Gospels as “verifiable history” and even made an apologetics case for their reliability, pointing to the martyrdom of the apostles and arguing that “nobody dies for a lie.”

Meanwhile, Gibson told host Raymond Arroyo for his Arroyo Grande podcast that the new films take “a pretty broad trip from our own broken world to other realms and stuff with different natures – and connects all of them,” Gibson said, explaining the films will include scenes of Abraham, Moses and David.

Jaakko Ohtonen will portray Jesus in the new films, succeeding Jim Caviezel, now 57, who famously played Christ in the 2004 film.

Unlike The Passion of the Christ, which featured dialogue in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, the two new films will be in English.

“I thought it was just silly to make people read subtitles in a foreign language when they were dealing with such heady concepts,” Gibson told Arroyo.

The production, Gibson said, was “bigger” than the 2004 movie, with elaborate sets recreating Jerusalem, Damascus and locations in Egypt.

“So there was a lot to contend with, and I think we managed to capture it,” he said in Toronto. “You never know till the shouting’s over and it’s all done and dusted, but we’ll see. But you’ve got to step up to the plate.”