Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator II’ will come out 24 years after the first film, and he has already started writing the script for ‘Gladiator III.’
“I’ve already got eight pages. I’ve got the beginning of a very good footprint,” the director recently told Total Film.
He also added, “If there’s a ‘Gladiator 3,’ I don’t think you’d ever go back into the arena. But I had to go back into the arena…”
This isn’t the first time Scott has suggested a third ‘Gladiator’ movie. In an interview with French magazine Premiere, Scott shared, “No, seriously! I’ve lit the fuse… The ending of ‘Gladiator II’ is reminiscent of ‘The Godfather,’ with Michael Corleone finding himself with a job he didn’t want, and wondering, ‘Now, Father, what do I do?’ So the next [film] will be about a man who doesn’t want to be where he is.”
The ‘Gladiator’ sequel takes place years after the first movie, with Paul Mescal playing Lucius, a role originally played by Spencer Treat Clark in 2000. In this sequel, Lucius is the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and the nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).
The recent ‘Gladiator II’ trailer shows Mescal’s Lucius as the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the first movie. Lucilla tells him the truth just before his fight in the Colosseum. Mescal learned about this plot detail early on when talking with Scott.
He shared his reaction to finding out about Lucius’ background in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, “Oh, absolutely. I was like, ‘Holy sh*t.'”
Mescal said knowing about Lucius’ parentage didn’t change how he approached the role. The actor noted, “The screenplay does a lot of that work for you in terms of the rubbing the dirt between the hands, the kind of DNA, and the genetics that Lucius inherits.”
He added, “So, I kind of tried to park that to one side because ultimately, where Lucius is coming from at the start of the film, he has a very different journey than Maximus does. And I was hoping that whatever DNA and even just the physical gestures was going to be one part of, and a kind of small part of, the performance. But then what I tried to do is figure out exactly who Lucius was and where those differences lay between Lucius and Maximus.”
‘Gladiator II’ will premiere in the U.S. on November 22 and stars Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Connie Nielsen, and Denzel Washington, among others.
