A sequel to Ridley Scott’s epic is coming.
Film fans will always have an incredibly strong bond with the work of Ridley Scott. After all, the director is responsible for the likes of Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down and the Oscar-winning swords and sandals epic, Gladiator.
Scott’s place in the pantheon of the world’s greatest directors is beyond question, but just like so many classic films before it, Hollywood has a tendency to remake/reimagine/re-explore these iconic films when they really shouldn’t.
Granted, Blade Runner 2049 and Prometheus were pretty decent (hey, we’re of the opinion that while Prometheus is flawed, it’s still decent) but as we’ve seen in the likes of Alien: Covenant, Terminator: Genisys, and A Good Day to Die Hard, Hollywood really knows how to milk every last drop of cash from these cash cows.
Granted, the aforementioned films are all franchise entries, so the idea of sequels is already well established, but the idea of a sequel to Gladiator seems absurd.
To begin with, Maximus’ story arc was brilliantly defined and finalised in the film that won five Oscars.
Well, Deadline have reported that a sequel to Gladiator will focus on Lucius, the nephew of Emperor Commodus, played in 2000 by Joaquin Phoenix.
Ridley Scott is attached to direct the script that’s written by Peter Craig (The Town).
Of course, this isn’t the first time that a sequel to Gladiator has been discussed because in 2013, Nick Cave said that Russell Crowe wanted to star in the sequel.
Yes, we know. There’s the glaring issue here that Crowe’s character, Maximus Decimus Meridius, actually died at the end of the film.
When Cave appeared on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron, he talked about the time he spent working on the script for Gladiator 2.
“‘Hey Russell, didn’t you die in ‘Gladiator 1′?’ ‘Yeah, you sort that out.’ So, he goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there’s this one god, there’s this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers,” said Cave.
He continued: “I wanted to call it ‘Christ Killer’ and in the end you find out that the main guy was his son so he has to kill his son and he was tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild. It was a stone-cold masterpiece. I enjoyed writing it very much because I knew on every level that it was never going to get made. Let’s call it a popcorn dropper.”
Whatever direction Gladiator 2 takes, here’s hoping that this angle is ignored.
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