Randall Wallace has watched Mel Gibson take on some of Hollywood’s most ambitious stories over their three decades of friendship and collaboration. But when Gibson first told him he wanted to make “The Passion of the Christ,” Wallace sensed immediately that this one was different. “What I understood most of all was how deeply … he related to the experience of Jesus on the cross,” the 76-year-old screenwriter told The Christian Post.
“It was a sacred moment.” “I saw that he had a vision, and I also saw that it was a vision that maybe other people could not yet see,” he said.
“It was the calling of his life at that moment to help other people see what he had seen.” Now, as “The Passion of the Christ” returns to theaters more than 20 years after becoming a cultural phenomenon, Wallace reflected on how the film serves as a starting point for Gibson’s next undertaking: “The Resurrection of the Christ.” The newly remastered 4K version of “The Passion” is playing nationwide from Sept.
10-17 and includes a behind-the-scenes preview of “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One,” which opens May 6, 2027.
Wallace, Gibson’s longtime friend and collaborator who wrote “Braveheart” and worked with him on “We Were Soldiers” and “Hacksaw Ridge,” is also a writer on “The Resurrection of the Christ.” The filmmaker, who studied religion and attended seminary at Duke University, said “The Passion” was one of the first films to tangibly depict the magnitude of the crucifixion.
“It’s so easy to think of spirituality as something disconnected from our physical lives, and to think of Jesus as a teacher, an idea, an abstraction, something beyond our everyday experience,” he said. “What Mel did with ‘The Passion’ was to show us the real-world humanity of Jesus, and