Martin Scorsese, 80, announces new film about Jesus after meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican

Martin Scorsese has announced a new project centered around Jesus following a private audience with Pope Francis during a visit to the Vatican in Rome on Saturday.

The 80-year-old Academy Award winner, whose latest film Killers Of The Flower Moon received a nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes, also spoke at a conference at the Vatican called The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination.

The Hollywood director, along with his wife of over 20 years, Helen Morris, had the chance to meet the Pope, who recently took a day off due to a fever amid health scares.

After that, the filmmaker went to a conference where he revealed plans to make a movie about Jesus Variety.

“I have responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by devising and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” he explained, adding: “And I rise the point of making it.’

At the conference, Martin talked about his own film projects and said, “How the Holy Father’s call ‘to show us Jesus’ moved him.”

The star discussed his appreciation for the 1964 religious drama, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

He also opened up about his own movie titled, The Last Temptation Of Christ, which was released in 1988 and starred Williem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, David Bowie as Pontius Pilate and also Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene.

The premise follows: “The life of Jesus Christ, his journey through life as he confronts the battles all men wage, and his final temptation on the cross,” according to one IMDB synopsis.

Scorsese also directed the 2016 historical epic Silence, which followed the story of the “persecution of Jesuit Christians in 17th-century Japan,” per Variety, and also spoke of “the next step in his exploration of the figure of Jesus.” ‘

Silence, starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, was also screened at the Vatican.

At the time of the project’s release, Martin, who previously met Pope Francis in 2016 and 2018, spoke with Antonio Spadaro, editor of the religious magazine called La Civilta Cattolica, about the film and his own religious beliefs.

“Well, I’m interested in how people perceive God, or, I should say, how they perceive the world of the intangible,” he explained.

“There are many paths, and I think the one you choose depends on the culture you’re a part of. My way was and is Catholicism,” he added, but later revealed he was not a churchgoer.

‘After many years of thinking about other things, dabbling here and there, I feel most comfortable as a Catholic. I believe in the principles of Catholicism. I’m not a church doctor. I am not a theologian who could dispute the Trinity. I’m certainly not interested in the politics of the institution.’

Martin continued, “But the idea of ​​the resurrection, the idea of ​​the incarnation, the powerful message of compassion and love—that’s the key.”

While additional details about his upcoming religious film have yet to be revealed, the Goodfellas director has been keeping busy in Italy following the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival, which officially ended on May 27.

On Monday, May 29, according to Variety, the filmmaker will visit the Casa del Cinema cinema in Rome, where screenings of his films will be shown.

The next day, on Tuesday, he will give a master class at the film school Centro Sperimentale, also in Rome. Later on Friday, Martin will visit the Cineteca di Bologna as a special guest.

The acclaimed director recently celebrated the premiere of his latest Apple TV+ film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, which has received critical acclaim since its screening at Cannes on May 20.

The project is based on a 2017 non-fiction book titled Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, written by David Grann.

Some of the star-studded cast include Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Brendan Fraser, Lily Gladstone and also Jesse Plemons.

The premise follows: “Members of the Osage Tribe in the United States are murdered under mysterious circumstances in the 1920s, leading to a major FBI investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover,” according to a IMDB synopsis.

After the film’s screening at Cannes, the project received a whopping nine-minute standing ovation, Variety reported.

The three-and-a-half-hour film had a $200 million budget and notably premiered 45 minutes late to the festival. The film was also Martin’s first film to be screened at Cannes since his 1985 project After Hours.

The film’s slow start didn’t deter the many positive raves and it already has a score of 96% Rotten tomatoes.

Following the Cannes premiere of Killers Of The Flower Moon, the film will hit theaters later this year on October 20.