Martin Scorsese announces his next movie is about Jesus after meeting with the Pope

(Image credit: Mondadori Portfolio / Contributor/Getty)

Martin Scorsese has revealed the subject of his next film – and it's going to be a movie about Jesus Christ. The director's latest effort, Killers of the Flower Moon, hasn't even had its wide release yet (though it's already garnering rave reactions and reviews, like our own 5-star Killers of the Flower Moon review).

"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 revealed at a conference at the Vatican (H/T Variety). Not only that, but it sounds like the film will be reaching us relatively soon, too: "And I'm about to start making it," Scorsese added. No further details have been revealed just yet.

This wouldn't be the director's first film about Jesus – The Last Temptation of Christ, starring Willem Dafoe as Jesus Christ, was released in 1988. Catholicism is also a major theme in Scorsese's work.

According to the report, Scorsese and his wife Helen Morris met with Pope Francis in a "brief private audience" ahead of the conference ("The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination"). Scorsese previously met the Pope in 2016 to screen Silence.

Killers of the Flower Moon, meanwhile, is due for limited theatrical release on October 6 before a wide release on Apple TV Plus on October 20 following its rapturous reception at Cannes. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, and Jesse Plemmons star.

While you wait, check out our guide to all of 2023's major movie release dates to fill out your watchlist.

I'm the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.