Alejandro Monteverde turns the birth of Christ into a dark thriller with Gael García Bernal in ‘Zero A.D.’

One of the world’s most familiar stories is getting a considerably darker big-screen treatment.

The new trailer for Zero A.D.: The Birth of Christ offers a first extended look at director Alejandro Monteverde’s ambitious retelling of the birth of Jesus, this time framed less like a traditional Nativity story and more like a historical thriller about political power, prophecy and a family trying to survive.

The film arrives in theaters December 11, positioning the biblical epic in the middle of the holiday movie season.

Jim Caviezel returns to biblical territory, but on the other side

The casting of Caviezel brings another layer to the movie. More than two decades after portraying Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Caviezel is returning to a major biblical production, but this time as one of the story’s central antagonists. The actor plays Herod the Great, whose fear of a prophesied new king drives the campaign against the newborn child.

The reversal makes his casting particularly notable: an actor strongly associated with one of cinema’s most famous portrayals of Jesus is now playing the ruler attempting to prevent that story from ever beginning.

Avatar star Sam Worthington plays Antipater, Herod’s son, while Ben Mendelsohn appears as Nahash. Mexican actor and filmmaker Gael García Bernal plays Joachim, and Cassel, the daughter of actors Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, takes on one of the film’s most important roles as Mary.

A major Latino presence behind the biblical epic

The project also has significant Latino talent behind the camera.

Monteverde, the Mexican filmmaker behind Sound of Freedom and Cabrini, directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay with Leo Severino and Rod Barr.

Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verástegui is among the film’s producers alongside Severino and Travis Mann. Verástegui and Monteverde previously collaborated on Sound of Freedom, which became an unexpected theatrical phenomenon in 2023 and helped significantly raise Monteverde’s profile with mainstream audiences.

With Zero A.D., Monteverde is again working with Angel, but on a story with an entirely different scale.

Angel has described the production as the most ambitious film it has released, presenting the familiar biblical account through the language of an epic built for theaters.

The movie was also originally announced under the working title Bethlehem before eventually becoming Zero A.D.: The Birth of Christ.

Watch the trailer