Martin Scorsese is returning to the subject of his most controversial film

The announcement came after his visit with the Pope.

While we're all waiting patiently for Martin Scorsese's upcoming flick Killers of the Flower Moon, the man himself has already announced his next project. The 80-year-old revealed the news after he visited Pope Francis at "The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination" convention. Scorsese and his wife Helen Morris met Pope Francis during a brief private audience at the Vatican.

"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," the director announced on Saturday. "And I’m about to start making it," the director added, suggesting that it will be his next project.

[caption id="attachment_774907" align="alignnone" width="2048"] Willem Dafoe in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (Photo: Universal Pictures)[/caption] It will not be the first time Scorsese has tackled the topic of Jesus, with the director helming films like the 1988 epic The Last Temptation of Christ, which stars Willem Dafoe as Jesus. The film brought huge controversy and upon its release there were protests, censoring, death threats against Scorsese and even a Paris cinema being burnt down by a Catholic group. Despite the controversy, the film was well-received and got Scorsese an Oscar nomination for Best Director, with Barbara Hershey earning a Best Supporting Actress nom for her role as Mary Magdalene. Scorsese also approached the topic in his 2016 drama Silence, which starred Andrew Garfield as a Jesuit Christian missionary in 17th-century Japan. His 1967 film debut Who's That Knocking at My Door and 1997's Kundun also explore the theme of religion. Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow will release in October. It's also reported to have a whopping run-time of three hours and 26 minutes.

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