“Are you not entertained?”
A sequel to Gladiator is on the way, according to a report from Deadline.
And most importantly, original director Ridley Scott is on board.
The 2000 historical epic was nominated for eleven Oscars and won five, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe.
Crowe starred as former Roman General Maximus, who swears revenge of Joaquin Phoenix’s evil emperor Commodus after his family is murdered and he is sent into slavery.
Of course, the end of Gladiator, [SPOILER] Maximus dies – which doesn’t really leave the door open for an obviously follow-up, unless it is just going to be 90 minutes of his hand running through the cornfields in heaven.
Instead, Deadline says the sequel will follow “the continuing story of Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen in the first movie)”.
“The youth was the nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the weaselly son of Roman leader Marcus Aurelius, who murdered his father, seized the throne, and wound up in the gladiator ring with Maximus,” they continue. “Maximus saved the boy and his mother while avenging his own family, and left a strong impression on the young Lucius”.
The Town and Hunger Games writer Peter Craig will pen the screenplay.
This isn’t the first time a sequel to Gladiator has been mooted. Singer-songwriter Nick Cave was once hired to write a screenplay, and had an absolutely bananas – but also brilliant – solution to dealing with Maximus’ death.
“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,” Cave explained on a 2013 episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.
“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.”
Not going to lie, we wish that film was happening instead.
