CV NEWS FEED // A social media post alleging that an upcoming Martin Scorsese movie will be about a gender-swapped Jesus is likely fake, but such a move remains “entirely possible,” according to a recent Forbes article.
Director Martin Scorsese did announce last year that his next movie will be about Jesus and based on Shūsaku Endō’s book A Life of Jesus. Scorsese also said the movie will likely be set in the 21st century. However, the casting has not been officially announced.
On January 9 Twitter account “FlopUp” posted a tweet that went viral for claiming: “Jennifer Lawrence has been casted as Jesus Christ and Emma Stone as Judas in Martin Scorsese’s next movie, set to shoot later this year. It will be a gender-reversed, modern telling of the biblical events set in Southern California.”
Forbes senior contributor Matt Novak responded to the tweet in a Forbes article on January 11 stating that the viral headline is “completely fake,” and that there is “absolutely no evidence that Jennifer Lawrence will play Jesus or that Emma Stone will play Judas.”
“The tweet has been seen by over 3.1 million people so far, but there’s absolutely nothing in the news that would suggest any of this is true,” Novak wrote. “The X account credits Variety as a ‘source’ for this information, but the account has just 800 followers and appears to be someone just making things up.”
Novak added that he reached out to Scorses’ representatives for clarification on the issue, but has not yet received a response.
“To be clear, it’s entirely possible that Scorsese will make a decision to gender-swap some roles in the upcoming film,” Novak wrote:
But there’s absolutely no evidence online that these claims about Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone are anything but lies or jokes being told online to get a rise out of people. The viral tweet has been met with a predictable response, as some people express outrage at the idea that Scorsese would do such a thing.
Out of the many movies Scorsese has directed, two have had directly Christian themes.
Scorsese directed 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, which was met with major backlash for its blasphemous content.
Scorsese also directed the 2016 film Silence, about persecuted Japanese Catholics in the 17th century, which received mixed reviews and flopped on theaters.
In May 2023 Scorsese attended a conference in Rome where he was briefly able to meet Pope Francis. Shortly after at a conference in Rome, Scorsese announced he would be working on a new movie about Jesus.
“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 said at the conference according to news outlet the Guardian.
Scorsese told the Los Angeles Times about the upcoming film, “I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion.”
