The Greatest Story Ever Sequeled!

Unless the point of the Bible is
that the ancient Romans were jerks...

Here's some good news for fans of traumatizing their children with brutal religious movies: anti-semitic sociopath Mel Gibson, who may or may not have made other movies, I can't remember, is doing Passion of the Christ 2! So um, hurray? Look, I didn't see the first one, but I do believe everything I read on the internet and the reviews said that it's incredibly, like, uncomfortably violent so much so that any sort of message is lost in an ultra-gory murderfest that completely misses the point.

Also, they kind of already knew where they
left the body, so 'search' is a bit generous.

But don't worry, while Jim Caviezel as Jesus might have suffered and died through two and a half soul-crushing hours of Passion 1, the sequel will be about the resurrection of Christ which I suppose may come as a spoiler if you never had to go to Sunday school or if you somehow missed the last two-thousand years of human civilization. On the other hand, we kind of knew how The Search for Spock was going to turn out, I mean, like, he couldn't not come back from the dead.

"Shirts are my one weakness. They're like 
my kryptonite. If I put one on, I could die. "

-Captain America

Anyway, Gibson is working on the script with a guy called Randel Wallace who wrote Braveheart so he knows all about drawn out torture scenes of dubious historical validity. He also wrote and directed a quasi-mainstream religious movie called Heaven is For Real. You probably didn't see it because Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out at like the same time and had Chris Evans in it while Heaven is For Real was some shlock about a little boy who has a near death experience and hangs out with Jesus.

"Balderdash! It's always the right
time to talk about money."

-Some rich guy

According to the Hollywood Reporter (it's an entertainment news website, not like a reporter, keep up) there're no studio attached to it nor are there any investors yet, but Wallace is apparently unconcerned about his complete lack of funding saying:

"It's too early to talk money. This is such a huge and sacred subject."

-Randal Wallace, screenwriter and

hang on, are we sure he's 

involved in the film industry?

"What? They're the ones who tempted
fate with all that 'unsinkable' crap."

I don't know anything about making movies, but he's probably going to need money. Like, a lot of money. All those robes and sandals aren't cheap. And that thing about the 'huge and sacred subject?' I get that he's like super religious, but has there ever been anything sacred to filmmakers? James Cameron made a shit ton of money profiting off the clusterfuck of hubris and human tragedy that was the sinking of the Titanic.

But whatever, they'll probably find investors. The first Passion did well because there's a built in audience of religious people who'll overlook the gratuitous violence, or weird Mel Gibson brand racism and make this one a success too. And who knows? We could be looking at the first of many sequels, prequels and maybe even a shared narrative universe of Bible movies. Everyone loves shared narrative universes, right?

"Coming this summer: The Passion: Origins: Judas Rising"