Martin Scorsese says his upcoming Jesus project is “kind of a film,” but it won’t have a straightforward narrative.

In May 2023, Scorsese announced his plans to make a new movie about Jesus Christ after he and his wife Helen Morris privately met with Pope Francis at the Vatican. In a recent interview with Sight and Sound, Scorsese elaborated on what his plans for this project are and revealed it will only “kind of” function as a movie.

“I think I’m finally getting around to what it could be,” Scorsese said. “It’s kind of a film, but it wouldn’t be a straight narrative, it wouldn’t be a documentary, it’d be a combination of things. And I think it may have to go back to Shūsaku Endō [author of the novel Silence] and his Life of Jesus [1973], which I found to be interesting because it takes Jesus as a… figure of thinking, and a question of Jesus from a point of view that’s not Western. And so I’m finding that comfortable in a way. And I’m wondering how I can pull some of my questions over the years and thoughts and attempts together and make it some kind of a film. And so, during this period, I’m working on that myself.”

What else do we know about Martin Scorsese’s Jesus project?

Scorsese previously said that he plans to play a role in his Jesus project, though he didn’t disclose how big of a performance it would be.

He told Sight and Sound that the project might have “characters” playing Jesus and that it might be set in the “modern-day,” though he also added that he doesn’t know “yet” as the development is still coming along.

Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, begins playing in theaters tonight, October 19, 2023. After that, Scorsese has a number of other projects he’s also working on, including an adaptation of David Grann’s The Wager, a Theodore Roosevelt biopic, and an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s Home he’s working on with Todd Field and Kent Jones.