Martin Scorsese to make another movie about Jesus Christ after meeting the Pope
ROME – American director Martin Scorsese, who had a private audience with Pope Francis last Saturday, has announced that he is making another movie about Jesus Christ.
Scorsese, 80, who is Catholic, courted controversy in 1988 when he made The Last Temptation Of Christ, which depicted Jesus (played by Willem Dafoe) as a man torn between God and earthly pleasures.
The movie was banned in Singapore as well as a number of other countries due to its content, which some people found to be blasphemous.
“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,” said Scorsese at a conference at the Vatican last Saturday. He added that he was about to start making it.
According to a report on entertainment portal Variety, Scorsese’s manager Rick Yorn did not respond to a request for comment regarding the new project.
Scorsese directed two other religion-related movies over the years – Kundun (1997), about the life and writings of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama; and Silence (2016), about the persecution of Jesuit Christians in 17th-century Japan.
In 2016, he premiered Silence in Rome and had his first meeting with the Pope, 86, who as a young man had joined the Jesuits in the hope of becoming a missionary in Japan.
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now