GLADIATOR Producer Offers Update on Ridley Scott's Sequel
Director Ridley Scott has been planning on making a sequel to Gladiator for years. The project is still in active development and thanks to producer Doug Wick, we have an update on where the project currently stands, saying:
"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."
He went on to explain that writing the sequel has been a problem, explaining:
"But it's also a real writing problem, too. 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."
Producer Walter F. Parkes previously said that the story for the sequel would pick up “30 years later… 25 years later.” Three decades after the death of Russell Crowe’s character Maximus. But, Wick recalled that Crowe’s agent called him up after the first movie opened with a sequel idea:
"Russell's agent called me after the opening weekend, said, 'I've got a great idea. They take the body around the corner of the arena, Russell gets off the stretcher and says, ‘Hey, it worked,’ and they high-five.’ That would be the beginning of the next movie. He was pitching that it was a fake death so Russell could come back and do it."
Yeah, that probably isn’t the best way to handle a sequel. Crowe’s character needs to stay dead. Maximus won’t be in the movie and the producers have said that they wouldn’t touch a sequel unless they felt there was a way to do it that was legitimate.
As for the possible story that the sequel might tell, it’s been said that it will follow the continuing story of Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen)- “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, who though mortally wounded, skewered the emperor before fading into the great beyond to reunite with his slain wife and son. Maximus saved the boy and his mother while avenging his own family, and left a strong impression on the young Lucius.”
It’ll be interesting to see if this sequel actually ends up moving forward. I’m curious to see what the creative team ends up doing with the sequel and I kinda hope that the movie gets made.
Source: ComicBook