Director Ridley Scott Explains What Led Him To Finally Make Gladiator 2
Sir Ridley Scott, the legendary filmmaker and grumpy grandpa extraordinaire, should probably be pictured in the dictionary next to the term "straight shooter." So when you ask him why he finally decided to make a sequel to "Gladiator" (his Best Picture Oscar-winning historical epic, which grossed almost half a billion dollars at the box office back in 2000), he's not going to default to studio-approved talking points. Instead, he'll cut right to the chase and tell you it all came down to finding a reason to make "Gladiator 2" other than for money.
"Well, economically, it makes sense," Scott told Deadline. (See what I mean?) Like most people, Scott felt the first film was "completely satisfactory, creatively complete, so why muck with it, right?" Of course, money talks in Hollywood, so he kept having conversations about the project for the next 20 years, to the point where it "started to spell itself out as an obvious thing to do, and that's how it evolved." Notably, the sequel nearly went in a wildly different direction with Nick Cave's script (yes, that Nick Cave), reviving Russell Crowe's heroic general turned vengeful gladiator Maximus after his death in the original "Gladiator" and sending him on a quest to kill a Christ-like individual at the command of the gods. Scott, however, was less inclined to venture so far outside the box.
'Who's the survivor?'
"Gladiator" ends on a pretty grim note, but also one befitting such a bloody tale of violence and unchecked machismo. The honorable Maximus, his family having been murdered after he refused to swear fealty to Joaquin Phoenix's newly-crowned Roman emperor Commodus (who killed his own father, Richard Harris' Marcus Aurelius, upon learning he had appointed Maximus as his successor to the throne), is enslaved and works his way up the rung in the gladiatorial arena, only for he and Commodus to slay one another during a one-on-one duel. Indeed, few are left standing once the dust clears, save for Aurelius' daughter and Maximus's old flame, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), and her young son Lucius.
According to Scott, the hardest part of "Gladiator 2" was "getting the footprint right with the writer." Eventually, though, he realized that bringing back Maximus — even by, admittedly, some imaginatively out-there means, had he gone with Cave's screenplay — was just less interesting to him than focusing on those who were still alive at the end of the first film:
"There was a very obvious way to go, which was who's the survivor? Well, the survivor could be Connie, Marcus' daughter, but what's even more interesting, and therefore a double whammy, there's the son. Whatever happened to him? It became about that [...] It's 20 years on. That was harder than casting Russell as Maximus, that was more obvious."
Sir Ridley Scott, part-time binge watcher
Where Lucius — who looked up to Maximus — was portrayed as a child by Spencer Treat Clark in the original "Gladiator," Paul Mescal will assume the role in the sequel. It's a natural progression for the up-and-comer, who broke out (and broke hearts) in the miniseries "Normal People" before making everyone cry again playing a troubled young father in the film "Aftersun." But while he's since gone on to romance both Saorise Ronan and Andrew Scott in this year's "Foe" and "All of Us Strangers," Mescal is still mostly unknown in the eyes of the general public.
For Scott, that's a good thing. "I'm always looking for someone, something new and fresh," he explained to Deadline. "I mean, fresh is terribly important. So they're not carrying ... baggage is a terrible word for what they've done before, because it's great stuff, but you will remember he just did this character already." He found precisely what he was looking for when he stumbled upon "Normal People." In his own words:
"I watched this show called 'Normal People.' It's unusual for me, but I saw one and thought, that's interesting. These actors are really good, I watched the whole goddamn show and thought, damn. So this came up at a time when I need a 23-year-old, 24-year-old to take up the mantle of Lucius. And I just said, you want to do it? [Mescal] said, yeah. He was about to do 'Streetcar Named Desire' in London."
Who says binge-watching streaming series isn't useful? It might just lead to you finding the star of the sequel you've spent the last two decades trying to get off the ground. We'll see how that casting approach works out for Scott when "Gladiator 2" charges into theaters on November 22, 2024.