The story of ‘Gladiator II’ is short-lived, but Rome was not restored after almost 25 years

For twenty-five years, Ridley Scott has been attempting to fit a rhinoceros into the Colosseum.

He discussed the possibility of bringing a real 6,000-pound rhino onto his set while filming his first Gladiator movie in 1999, but animal trainers told him that the horned creatures were too hard to handle. He then spoke with CGI specialists to see if a digital version could be created for the film, but they informed him that the technology was prohibitively costly.

For Scott and his crew, it became a common joke for the next 25 years. In an interview in 2020, Scott’s producer Doug Wick stated, “Ridley gets his rhino if we ever do a sequel.”. “.”.

When they eventually made a sequel, Ridley received his rhino, a cutting-edge, remote-controlled animatronic version created by Industrial Light and Magic that can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour — all while being ridden by a man brandishing a sword.

Scott boasts, “We had a real rhino down to his legs.”. “”.

Even before Gladiator’s May 2000 release, there had been whispers of a sequel, and those whispers intensified when the DreamWorks movie took home five Academy Awards, including best picture. However, there was at least one significant barrier to the production of Gladiator II: Maximus, played by Russell Crowe, the film’s protagonist, passes away at the conclusion of Gladiator. Its antagonist, Emperor Commodus of Joaquin Phoenix, also does.

Scott explains why he decided to kill the movie’s two main characters in 1999 by saying, “One always thinks, ‘Should we really kill them or not?'”. However, since it truly is about immortality, it seemed to be the most dramatic thing to do, making it memorable. “.”.

Over the following years, the prolific Scott, who is currently 86, directed 17 movies that weren’t set in ancient Rome, including two that were set in space (Alien: Covenant, 2017; Prometheus, 2012). The prospect of going back to the historic Colosseum, however, just would not go away.

“I was told over and over again that Gladiator was their favorite movie,” Scott says. I’ve seen it fifty times, one man said. That struck a chord. “.”.

Over the years, several attempts had been made to write a sequel script. An early attempt at a sequel was made by Gladiator co-writer John Logan, and one of his ideas was a prequel. Nick Cave was brought in to try a more ambitious strategy after that pitch was rejected: a fantasy version in which Maximus reappeared as an immortal warrior who would reappear at significant historical events, including World War II. The development of this idea, however, stalled after Paramount purchased DreamWorks’ live-action library in 2006.

Despite several unsuccessful attempts over the years, Scott grew close to writer David Scarpa, who wrote his 2017 drama All the Money in the World and his 2023 Napoleon biopic. Together, the two focused on a plot point that did not entail raising Maximus from the grave. Rather, the story of Gladiator II begins twenty years later and revolves around Maximus’ son Lucius, who was portrayed by child actor Spencer Treat Clark in the first film and by Paul Mescal as an adult in the second. As Lucius, aided by Macrinus, a former slave turned gladiator guru played by Denzel Washington, sets out on a quest for vengeance, the story becomes a revenge tale. In Scarpa’s screenplay, the former heir to the Roman Empire is captured and enslaved during a battle with General Marcus Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal, but eventually escapes.

Scarpa describes his approach to the topic as “having to deal with people’s emotional relationship to [the original] movie and to their proprietary feelings about it.”. Ridley wasn’t going to simply do a greatest hits album of the first film, even though he wanted the world to continue. “.”.

Finding a serious enough actor to play Maximus Junior was, of course, another significant challenge, and Scott had to wait a long time before deciding on Mescal. Miles Teller and Timothée Chalamet were considered for a while. However, one evening while Scott was binge-watching Normal People on Hulu, he noticed Mescal and instantly thought of the little-known Irish actor, then 28 years old, in a codpiece.

Mescal met with Wick and co-producer Lucy Fisher for lunch to discuss whether he could manage such a physically and mentally taxing role. He was deemed capable. Then, Mescal’s remarkable performance as Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire earned him an Olivier Award. Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland, co-presidents of Paramount, flew to London to see the performance. Wick acknowledges that having a well-known star is always preferred by studios. “No other actor came close,” however. “”.

In a half-hour Zoom call, Mescal virtually had the role by the time he finally met Scott. The actor, however, thought about it for a few seconds before accepting Mescal’s account.

Referring to the perils of action-hero typecasting, he states, “I would have had a potential reticence around what the first big studio film was going to be, because it sets out your stall as an actor.”. According to Ridley, a film like Gladiator II is the epitome of studio, large-scale filmmaking because it is based on the human condition and uses a very expressive language. “”.

Mescal fought the impulse to ask Crowe for acting advice, even though it must have been tempting. Crowe has stated that he experienced “a tinge of melancholy, a tinge of jealousy” about Gladiator II moving forward without his character. “In fact, having some distance from him was helpful because I had to go and take care of myself,” Mescal claims.

A few well-known actors completed the cast, including Washington, who starred in Scott’s 2007 crime drama American Gangster (opposite Crowe, incidentally) and had a close relationship with Scott’s late brother, Tony, having worked on five films together, and Connie Nielsen, who returns from the original film as Maximus’ ex-lover and Lucius’ mother. “He called and I asked, ‘When?’ It’s one of the best,” the two-time Oscar winner tells THR. However, Scott also chose other up-and-coming actors for important parts. For example, Joseph Quinn, a young actor who portrayed Eddie Munson on Stranger Things, was cast as Emperor Geta, while Barry Keoghan, played by Saltburn, was initially chosen to play Geta’s brother Caracalla. Fred Hechinger, who would soon play Dimitri in Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter, took Keoghan’s place after he left the project before production started due to scheduling conflicts. When Hechinger’s agent called to inform him that he had landed the part, he was already in his car. “I realized that my brain was breaking too much to drive any further, so I had to pull over and park,” he remembers.

In May 2023, as the desert was beginning to warm up for summer, production got underway in Morocco and Malta. Mescal, who had trained hard for the role and maintained a high-protein diet (a lot of chicken), found himself melting in some of the hot fight scenes. He says, “There was probably a little bit of borderline heat stroke from time to time.”. “In that heat, you can’t get enough water into your body.”. No big deal, though, so I was lucky. “”.

Wearing pounds of priceless yellow metal was Washington’s biggest obstacle during filming, so his job was a little easier. The actor was lavished with an assortment of ancient-looking Roman jewelry by costume designers David Crossman and Janty Yates, who won an Oscar for her work on the first Gladiator. Yates laughs as he explains, “We just put more gold on, and more gold, and some more gold.”. Quinn, meanwhile, recalls working to forge a fraternal bond with Hechinger during their downtime together during the Malta shoot: “We just did as much eating and laughing and drinking and talking as possible.”. “.”.

The size of the sets would have astounded a Caesar, especially the one in Malta where Scott recreated a quarter-mile-long section of the Colosseum. Cinematographer John Mathieson, who received an Oscar nomination for the original film, recalls that “you’d really have to think hard about going back to get it if you left your sun hat behind.”. Parts of the sets that were left over from previous Scott productions were used in other ways. Production designer Arthur Max, who was also nominated for the first Gladiator, says, “We made a port by recycling my old Jerusalem set from [Scott’s 2005] Kingdom of Heaven.”.

Like the fate of the missing ninth legion, the exact cost of making Gladiator II is one of life’s eternal mysteries. According to Scott, he stayed $10 million under budget, while Paramount maintains the total came in at less than $250 million. However, due to strike shutdowns and other problems, there had been reports that the true costs had risen to over $300 million. Regardless of the amount spent, the money was obviously displayed on the screen. Enormous action scenes and extravagant Roman extravagance abound in the movie.

“Everything, [like] the rhinoceros, had to be defended and was carefully considered,” says Wick. You go over everything with the studio. However, you don’t want fight scenes that seem to be rehashing from the original film. “”.

A scene where a ship full of gladiators and a boatload of Romans engage in a naval battle in the flooded Colosseum was one that the team pushed hard to include. It turns out to be historically accurate, despite how ridiculous it sounds. While Scott’s choice to include sharks in the pool was, in her words, “total Hollywood bullshit,” Dr. Shadi Bartsch, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago, acknowledged that the ancient Romans occasionally filled the Colosseum with water for simulated sea battles. The Romans probably had no idea what a shark was. “”.

Scott implores the professor to change his mind. He maintains that “accuracy is everything.”.

The production, which had up to 11 cameras per scene and was directed by Scott, was a masterwork of cinematic efficiency despite its extravagant excess. Some of the setbacks included Hechinger being bitten by one of Emperor Caracalla’s pet monkeys and, more gravely, an incident during a fire stunt that sent multiple crew members to the hospital with burns (“They were OK, but they did get scorched — very unfortunate,” says Scott). However, the director reports that he completed principal photography for the entire movie in roughly 50 days.

However, the main conflict in Gladiator II will take place in multiplexes when the movie opens in November rather than in the Colosseum. 22, the same day as the highly anticipated Wicked adaptation from Universal. Theater owners are hoping for a Barbenheimer-style weekend, with both Wickiator and Glicked bringing in sizable crowds. And not just theater owners have aspirations of conquering the world. Mescal, who has already seen and enjoyed the Wicked film, says, “I’m a musical guy, so it’s exciting to see big-scale musicals and to be releasing on the same weekend as them.”. “I’m hoping it will be fantastic for film. “.”.

Regarding the film’s reception, Scott says he isn’t considering it because he has learned from bitter, difficult experience not to rely too much on a hit. His teammates, however, aren’t quite as composed.

Regarding his director who has been nominated three times, Washington claims that Riley is long overdue. It’s incomprehensible that he hasn’t received an Oscar. Actually, I don’t believe it. “.”.

Scott can always try Gladiator III if Gladiator II doesn’t work out, which is improbable based on the mostly positive reviews from early screenings. He claims that plans are already underway for a second sequel, but he has not disclosed any details about its potential plot. The only thing he will say about its evolving outlines is, “There’s a soft footprint.”.

Regardless of the subject matter, Mescal, who recently agreed to work with the director again on the thriller Dog Stars, says he would be delighted to reprise his role as Scott’s codpiece. He states, “We haven’t really talked about it in great detail, but I’d be excited about the idea.”. “”.