With The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson directed one of the most controversial films of the early 2000s. The story of the suffering of the key figure of the Christian religion is so brutal and detailed that Many sensitive minds still fail with the work to this day.
Before Gibson, master director Martin Scorsese also made a Jesus film with Willem Dafoe in the lead role. As the Passion of the Christ director recently revealed, he himself was supposed to take on the big part in Scorsese’s version.
Mel Gibson has turned down the lead role in Martin Scorsese’s Jesus film
According to The Playlist, Gibson recently spoke as a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast about meeting Scorsese in the ’80s:
I was in a hotel room at the Savoy and had food poisoning. I almost died from it. I ate a bad oyster in London and was dying in a hotel room and couldn’t even walk. It was the worst. While I was there, Scorsese calls the room and says, ‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’ I go and talk to Martin and he’s in his darkened room. In this dark room, 18 different televisions are playing at the same time. He talks to me about The Last Temptation of Christ and wants me to play Jesusand I said, ‘Wow, I’m not doing that.’
You can watch the trailer for Scorsese’s Jesus film here:
Trailer: The Last Temptation of Christ (M. Scorsese, 1988)
Scorsese then made The Last Temptation of Christ with Willem Dafoe in the title role. The film released in 1988 shows Jesus of Nazareth as a doubterwho is torn between his human existence as a carpenter and his higher destiny as an alleged messiah.
While Gibson turned down the Jesus role in the 80s, he later cast Jim Caviezel for the part in his own Jesus film The Passion of the Christ.
Also interesting:
Mel Gibson is still working on The Passion of the Christ sequel
Last year we reported that Gibson was said to have been with a production team in Malta looking for locations for The Passion of the Christ 2. In the current podcast with Joe Rogan he spoke again about the project is still supposed to be his next film as a director. Gibson says he’s now hoping to start filming next year. The sequel is officially titled The Resurrection of the Christ and is further described by the filmmaker as an LSD trip.
Above all, the visualization of heaven and hell after the death of Jesus Christ will be a staging challenge for filming the sequel. But Gibson already has ideas for it. The Passion of Christ 2 will not appear before 2027.