With “Gladiator II” in cinemas, filmmaker Ridley Scott is still out there promoting the film and recently spoke about some of the earlier incarnations of the project before he settled on his cast.
As many know, one potential idea for the sequel that was considered for a while was musician Nick Cave being commissioned to pen a sequel which would see Maximus in purgatory and visiting various points throughout time.
Speaking with People, Scott spoke of that earlier incarnation: “Russell and I had a go at it around 18 years ago. I had Nick Cave writing the script and I kept saying [to Russell], ‘But you’re dead.”
Scott added that: “the only way of doing it was to go to another battle and through a dying warrior, he comes back into the spirit of the warrior. So that’s his portal.”
As it would require another actor though, Crowe didn’t want to do it: “He said, ‘So that’s no f—ing good, is it?’ It didn’t really work.” The film that got made didn’t actually get started until 2018 with Scott committing to doing it in 2022.
It was sometime around then that “Dune” star Timothee Chalamet was up for the lead role of Lucius according to Scott in a new THR feature.
Ultimately scott stumbled on the Hulu series “Normal People” by ‘accident’ he says. He thought the leads of that series, one of which was Mescal, were “terrific”. The film’s producers agreed after seeing Mescal on stage in “A Streetcar Named Desire”.
However the reviews haven’t agreed with the choice, one of the film’s most common complaints seems to be that Mescal was miscast and certainly doesn’t showcase the talent he has shown in his more arthouse titles.
“Gladiator II” is in cinemas everywhere now.
