New Jesus Movie To Be Filmed Later This Year – The Hollywood Reporter

Martin Scorsese

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Martin Scorsese has completed the script for the Jesus movie he first teased in May, the director said Los Angeles Times in a story published Monday. Scorsese said his project will be filmed later this year and is expected to be only 80 minutes long.

“I'm trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative weight of what has been associated with organized religion,” Scorsese said. The film doesn't seem to have a distributor yet.

Scorsese co-wrote the new project with critic and director Kent Jones. Based on the book by Shūsaku Endō A life of Jesus — Edo also wrote Silencewhich Scorsese adapted for the screen in 2016 starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson.

“I responded to the Pope's call to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a script for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese told the Jesuit magazine. La Civiltà Cattolica (Catholic Culture) last May.

If Scorsese's 80-minute prediction turns out to be true, the new film could be the shortest ever (Killers of a Flower Moonwhich was released last November and is now heading into the Oscar race, clocking in at an impressive 206 minutes).

The Jesus movie will be set mostly in the present day and will focus on the principles of Jesus' core teachings rather than a specific religious doctrine.

“Right now, 'religion,' you say that word and everybody's up in arms because it's failed in so many ways,” Scorsese said. “But that doesn't necessarily mean the initial impulse was wrong. Let's go back. Let's think about it. You can reject it. But it can make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don't dismiss it out of hand. That's all I'm talking about. And I say this as a person who will be 81 in a few days.”

For Scorsese, the work is an accumulation of what many of his films have pursued throughout his career.

“I tried to find it with Kudun and The Last Temptation of Christeven gangs of new york, to an extent, ways of redemption and the human condition and how we deal with the negative things within us,” he said. “Are we decent and then learn to be indecent? Can we change? Will others accept this change? And it's really, I think, a fear of society and culture being corrupted by a lack of foundation in morality and spirituality. Not religion. Spirituality. Denying this.”

He continued, “I'm finding my way in a…if you want to call it a 'religious' sense, but I hate to use that language because it's often misinterpreted. But there are basic fundamental beliefs that I have — or try to have — and I use these films to find them.”