“If you look at the synoptic Gospels — and they are synoptic, which means they don’t tell you everything,” Mel Gibson told The Christian Post in an interview this week. “And even John says, ‘Y’know, hey, there were many other things [Jesus] said and did which, if they were to be written down, couldn’t fill all the libraries of all the world,’ right? So there’s a lot of stuff that wasn’t written and the Gospels are synoptic.”
Per the publication U.S. Catholic, “Synoptic is a Greek word that means ‘to see together.’ The term refers to the three gospels that present the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a somewhat similar fashion. The synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke.”
Gibson seems to be saying that his upcoming two part film event, The Resurrection of the Christ, will seek to fill in some of the narrative between the various tellings.
“One can look at these things and go, ‘I wonder what was around that?’ and try and analyze those things and make suppositions about what might have been,” said the director. “Not to go against anything in orthodox teaching but to enhance, I think, what’s there for everyone to see and hopefully they’ll be surprised by some of those revelations.”
The films’ narrative scope is expansive, to say the least.
“There’s some crazy stuff,” Gibson revealed last year. “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.” Sheol is the underworld of the Old Testament.
“I mean, you’ll be in the firmament before the creation,” Gibson told The Christian Post this week. “You’ll be in the Hell of the just, and then you’ll be in the Hell of the damned. And so it jumps around a little bit. It doesn’t just stay on the planet here. It gets around.”
Lionsgate will release the film in North America and the UK, as well as in Latin America through IDC, its JV in the region, and will team with international distribution partners in many other territories.
The Resurrection of the Christ is Part One is set to arrive on May 6, 2027 (Ascension Day), with Part Two on May 25, 2028 (Ascension Day and Memorial Day weekend).
