Mel Gibson Says Sequel to His Most Successful Film Will Be an 'Acid Trip'
Controversial actor and director Mel Gibson vowed in a new interview with Joe Rogan that the upcoming sequel to his most successful film will be “an acid trip.”
Gibson is of course referring to his long-gestating sequel to The Passion of the Christ, his self-financed historical (and graphic) epic that grossed over $612 million worldwide and was for a time the most profitable independent (and R-rated) film of all time. The sequel has been in development since 2016, but Gibson is hopeful production will begin in 2026.
“I’m hoping [to start] next year sometime,” Gibson said, before stipulating, “There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip." The Mad Max star told Rogan that when he first saw the script, which he wrote alongside Randall Wallace, he’d “never read anything like” it. “My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this,” Gibson continued. “So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff.”
While the first Passion was mostly earthbound, despite its supernatural ending and gratuitous flesh-ripping, Gibson has different plans for the sequel, entitled The Resurrection of the Christ. “I think 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.”
Gibson has been alluding to Resurrection’s tonal shift for a few years, revealing in a 2022 interview with the National Christian Register that the sequel would “not [have] a linear narrative” like the original. “You have to juxtapose the central event that I’m trying to tell with everything else around it in the future, in the past, and in other realms,” Gibson explained, “and that’s kind of getting a little sci-fi out there.”
Gibson’s next directorial project is Flight Risk, a tongue-in-cheek action-thriller starring a bald Mark Wahlberg, Topher Grace, and Michelle Dockery. It hits cinemas on Jan. 24. You can check out the latest trailer below.
