Martin Scorsese announces new Jesus film after meeting with Pope Francis
Post-Cannes, Martin Scorsese is doing a tour of Italy, and one of his first stops: Vatican City. According to Variety, Scorsese met with Pope Francis and promised him a new Christ movie.
“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese said at the Vatican. “And I’m about to start making it.”
Religion has always been an important part in Scorsese’s filmography, even in stories that had nothing to do with it. So for the director to tackle this kind of movie directly might not be surprising to his fans.
The director previously tackled the life of Jesus Christ in his 1988 religious epic The Last Temptation Of Christ, where Willem Dafoe played the lead character. The film, based on the novel of the same name, attracted controversy from certain Christian groups due to its departure from the gospel narratives.
Scorsese last explored religion directly in his 2016 historical drama Silence, which starred Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as two Jesuit priests in the 17th century who travel from Portugal to Japan to spread Christianity.
Scorsese is on the continent after debuting his latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, at Cannes. It earned a 9-minute standing ovation, and praise from critics. After his meeting with the Pope, Scorsese is set to put on a master class for a Roman film school and to attend a retrospective of his films at Rome’s Casa del Cinema cinematheque.
