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Thoughts and Spoilers · Aug 10, 2026

Mel Gibson confirms, reveals a few things about his upcoming Resurrection movies

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Peter T Chattaway · Thoughts and Spoilers

Jaakko Ohtonen as Jesus in The Resurrection of the Christ.

Mel Gibson spoke to Collider at Fan Expo Boston over the weekend and revealed a new thing or two about The Resurrection of the Christ, his two-part follow-up to 2004’s The Passion of Christ. Along the way, he also confirmed a few things he had hinted at before.

A quick list, with a few comments by me:

  • The main new detail, to me, is that the film will take place not just in Jerusalem but in Damascus, Rome, Egypt, and the desert—and “massive” new sets were built for these locations. Hmmm. Damascus is mentioned several times in the New Testament, and always in connection with Paul’s conversion and/or subsequent escape from the city in a basket lowered from a window (Acts 9:1-30, 22:3-16, 26:12-20; II Corinthians 11:32-33; Galatians 1:17). Paul also spent time in the desert (Galatians 1:17) and ultimately went to Rome (Acts 28:14-31). Gibson has said the films will cover a huge swath of history, right up to “the death of the last apostle,” so is it safe to assume they will tell the story of Paul, too? Or the book of Acts in general?

  • The films are non-linear, and will “juxtapose the actual event [the Resurrection of Jesus] against many other actual events in order to grasp the significance of it”. Gibson has been talking about the films’ non-linear approach since at least September 2016, when he said he was thinking of going back and forth between the Old and New Testaments.

  • Gibson confirmed that the dialogue will be in English, instead of the Aramaic and Latin he used in The Passion: “They’re both in English because the subject matter and just the theological download you have to go through is so complex that I don’t think people would like to have to read it in subtitles in a foreign language. You want to be able to digest it straight away.” I believe he first floated the possibility of shooting the film in English while speaking to Joe Rogan in January 2025.

  • Gibson says he split the project into two films because there was “a natural breaking point” in the script, and he says the two films are “distinct”: “I think they stand alone as individual pieces, but they do complete one another. So that’s good.”

  • Gibson says the Resurrection can’t be dismissed as a biblical “fairy tale” because “there are 17 separate secular historians that attest the same kind of thing”. That’s a very specific number. I can guess at a few of the people he might be thinking of (Josephus, Tacitus, etc.), but I wonder who else is on his list.

The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One is set to come out on Ascension Day, i.e. May 6, next year. Part Two is set for the following Ascension Day, May 25, 2028.

A “behind-the-scenes sneak peek” of the films will play in theatres next month during a re-release of The Passion of the Christ September 10-17.

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