Filmmaker Ridley Scott’s next work is “Gladiator 2” which was halfway through shooting when the actor’s strike halted production. It’s expected that once said strike is over, Scott and his cast and crew will return to work.
Before then he has to promote “Napoleon,” his upcoming biopic about the French general turned emperor starring Joaquin Phoenix alongside Vanessa Kirby as Josephine as well as Tahir Rahim, Ben Miles and Ludivine Sangier.
Speaking with Total Film, Scott revealed the movie was shot in an incredibly short 62 days.
The two-month shoot happened despite boasting multiple major-scale battle sequences across a two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Scott is known for being quick with filming, but even by his standards, this was fast.
He explains that it all comes down to pre-planning and “seven years of art school” which allows him to really draw:
“I’ll draw all my own storyboards. Every frame is drawn from close-up to medium shots. The locations I haven’t found yet – I’ll imagine the location. So we’ll look for that location. Visual narrative is my strength. I find it very easy, therefore, to handle eight or eleven cameras at once.
“…On all these things [Alien, Legend, Thelma & Louise], I operated the camera. I know exactly what a lens will give me. Today, that has evolved into six to eight to eleven cameras. So I’ll sit in my trailer. I’ll have monitors like this [spreads arms to indicate a bank of screens]. I’ll be sitting there, talking to each operator
Every scene is geometry. By having eleven to fourteen cameras, we shot Napoleon in 62 days. I’m doing Gladiator 2 now in 54 days, because I’m not doing fifty takes with one camera, on one shot, and then turning around. This normal fight [scene] that could take anything up to a month, I’ll take six days. So the savings are colossal.”
With “Gladiator 2,” Oscar nominee Paul Mescal leads the film as the grown-up Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and nephew of Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) from the first film.
Scott tells the outlet that the reason Mescal is set to lead the film all ties back to his own binge-watching habit and the actor’s breakthrough work in the BBC and Hulu’s limited drama series “Normal People”. He explains:
“I watched Normal People. It’s not my kind of show but I saw four episodes in a row – boom, boom, boom. I was thinking, ‘Who the hell is this Paul Mescal,’ and then I watched the whole series. And then, suddenly, Gladiator 2 came up, because the script was working pretty well. And I kept thinking about Paul. And that was it.”
Nielsen returns in the movie, as does Djimon Hounsou as Juba, and Derek Jacobi as Gracchus. They’re joined by Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, May Calamawy, Lior Raz, and more.
