Gladiator 2 Will Be 'Ready To Go' After Ridley Scott's Next Movie, Apparently
What we do in life echoes in eternity, and director Ridley Scott is making sure that he crams as much into his life as humanly possible. The 83-year-old filmmaker has two major movies coming out this year ("House of Gucci" and "The Last Duel") and a Napoleon-centric drama called "Kitbag" lined up to film next. But he's not slowing down: after "Kitbag," Scott is going to travel back to the Roman Empire to direct a sequel to "Gladiator" that's been more than twenty years in the making.
He's been teasing this follow-up for years, but speaking with Empire Magazine recently, Scott confirmed that "Gladiator 2" is coming up very soon for him.
"I'm already having [the next] 'Gladiator' written now. So when I've done Napoleon, 'Gladiator' will be ready to go."
What is Gladiator 2 About?
The first "Gladiator" came out in 2000 and starred Russell Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius, a Roman general who was sold into slavery and forced to compete in gladiatorial combat after the Emperor's son murdered his own father and assumed the throne. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and turned Crowe (who won Best Actor) into an A-list superstar. Crowe's character dies at the end of the first movie, so he won't be playing the lead role in "Gladiator 2." Instead, early reports have indicated that the film will take place 25 years after the events of the first movie and follow Lucius, the son of Connie Neilsen's Lucilla and nephew of the usurping emperor played by Joaquin Phoenix. Lucius idolized Maximus for his bloody victories in the gladiator ring, but didn't really play a significant role in the first film. Spencer Treat Clark played the boy in the original, and it's unclear whether Scott will hire him to reprise the role in "Gladiator 2" (although it's worth noting that Clark recently appeared in "Glass," a sequel to another film from around that time, "Unbreakable").
Famously, musician and screenwriter Nick Cave wrote a "Gladiator" sequel that he wanted to call "Christ Killer," which was absolutely wild. In his script, Lucius is now the evil emperor, Maximus comes back from the dead and basically becomes an immortal warrior fighting in wars throughout history, and at one point he's tasked by the gods to kill Jesus and his followers. It ends, as you undoubtedly expected, with Maximus working at the Pentagon. Naturally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a studio did not greenlight a sequel wherein an immortal warrior murdered the lord and savior of a significant portion of the country, and it sounds like the version of "Gladiator 2" that we'll eventually see will be far less controversial (and inherently far less interesting) than whatever Cave had cooked up.