Mel Gibson was the latest guest on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and during the lengthy interview, the veteran actor said he hopes to begin production on a Passion Of The Christ sequel next year. 

“I’m hoping next year sometime. There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it,” Gibson said of the film’s script, which he later added was penned by himself alongside his brother and Randall Wallace (Braveheart) over a seven-year period. Gibson said the film will be titled The Resurrection Of The Christ.

“My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff,” Gibson added. “And 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. You need to go to Sheol.”

Gibson said that he plans to re-cast Jim Caviezel in the role of Jesus. Per the film’s title, the film will focus on Jesus Christ’s resurrection. The Passion Of The Christ ends with the crucifixion of Jesus. In the bible, Jesus is resurrected three days later. Gibson said he would need to enlist “a few techniques” such as CGI de-aging on Caviezel since more than 20 years have passed since the first film.  

Gibson described the film as “very ambitious” and said the narrative moves from “the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.”

“It’s about finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious,” he said. “I think I have ideas about how to do that and how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to require a lot of planning and I’m not wholly sure I can pull it off to tell you the truth, it’s super ambitious. But I’ll take a crack at it because that’s what you got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right?”