For nearly two decades, talk has swirled of a potential follow-up to Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator”.
At one point over a decade ago, Scott and Crowe approached “The Proposition” writer Nick Cave about doing a script, his version a wild flight of fancy in which Maximus was reincarnated by the Roman gods and transported to fight in important periods in history.
More recently came word in late 2018 that “12 Strong” and “The Town” scribe Peter Craig had been hired to pen the script which would most likely follow a grown up Lucius, son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).
Recently, producer Doug Wick spoke with Comicbook.com about why the project has never progressed much and he says it comes down to the cold fact that the death of Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius makes any possible sequel story narrative a struggle:
“Like any good movie, Gladiator works by the skin of its teeth, where this fight movie ends up adding up that way, and so, again, to take the best of what the audience is attached to, but make it fresh in some new incarnation, it’s really challenging. And, of course, the leading man is dead. If you do Godfather, you say, ‘Okay, the audience loves these stars in this wardrobe,’ and you bring back the old team.”
While those involved in the original don’t want to do a follow-up just for the sake of it, Wick says that everyone involved in the original is interested in returning:
“Ridley would love to do it. It’s really all about getting something on paper. Everyone [involved with the original] loves the movie too much to ever consider cheaply exploiting it and making something that’s a shadow of it. It’s just really a clear creative problem, working on a script, and if we can ever get it to a place … Ridley’s working on it, it’s really just a question of whether we can get it to a place where it feels worthy to make it. It’s a real challenge.”
The original film scored Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe’s work, while it was also a hit with $460 million at the worldwide box office.
