The Passion of the Christ is currently back in cinemas in 4K with a behind-the-scenes first look at next year’s The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One. Mel Gibson’s two-part sequel recast an aged-out Jim Caviezel’s Jesus (it’s been 22 years since the first film) with Finnish actor Jaakko Ohtonen. And it looks like the first sequel is going to be jumping backwards and forwards in time. Stills shown in cinemas include scenes with early Christian martyrs, from those thrown into the gladiatorial arena to Andrew the First-Called Apostle being crucified on an X. If that wasn’t intriguing enough, Gibson’s friend, the actor Kevin Sorbo, has revealed exclusively to the Express how The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One opens, and it’s aeons before Jesus’ birth.
Sorbo, who is set to star as Noah in next year’s other biblical epic The Flood: End of Mankind, said of The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One, “That’s going to be huge. I know Mel, and I wanted a role in that movie so bad. And he said to me, ‘You’re too recognisable’. I replied, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘I don’t put myself in that movie. I didn’t want to be in Braveheart, and they talked me into it. If you look at Jim Caviezel in that first one, they put a nose on him, they put contacts on him, they changed him quite a bit. I’m not using him this time around because he’s in his fifties now, so I’m using an unknown to play Jesus.”
Sorbo, who, like his friends Gibson and Caviezel, is a devout Christian, continued: “It’s a two-parter back-to-back. He spent an hour talking to my wife and I, told us the whole story. And it starts, ‘In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.’ He’s starting then! So when God banished Lucifer to Earth, and Lucifer says, ‘I’m gonna take more souls than you’, that’s where it starts. That’s why Jesus had to come somewhere down the road.”
Sorbo added, “The story is then going to work its way to the Resurrection. I think they’ll do maybe a quick thing of showing the Crucifixion, because they’ve already done that part [in The Passion of the Christ]. It’s going to be interesting. Mel and his brother were writing the scripts for five years.”
The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One hits cinemas on May 6, 2027 (Ascension Day in the Western Church) and The Resurrection of the Christ: Part Two follows on May 25, 2028 (Ascension Day in the Eastern Church).
