Filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott kept Gladiator fans waiting for almost two decades for a follow-up to his Oscar-winning blockbuster – but it turns out that wasn’t always his intention.
The original Gladiator was released in 2000 while the new follow-up – which takes place 15 years after the events of the first film – is in cinemas.
But in a new interview with People magazine, Sir Ridley admitted that he and Gladiator star Russell Crowe first “had a go at” writing a script for a sequel just a few years after the first film debuted.
“I had Nick Cave writing the script and I kept saying [to Russell], ‘But you’re dead’,” he explained. “And he said, ‘I know I’m dead. And I want to come back from the dead’.”
What followed was a proposed plan that would involve a time-travelling “portal” to bring Russell’s character “back from the dead”, just as the New Zealand-born actor hoped.
Well... sort of.
“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,” he recalled.
However, Russell was apparently displeased with this plan, as it meant he wouldn’t be needed to play his character.
Or, as Sir Ridley put it: “He said, ‘so that’s no fucking good, is it?’.”
“It didn’t really work,” he admitted.
Ultimately, Russell didn’t make an appearance in Gladiator II, aside from in footage from the first film that was included in the sequel.
In the lead-up to Gladiator II’s release, Russell made no secret of the fact that he was growing tired of being asked about it, because of the fact he wasn’t involved.
“They should be fucking paying me for the amount of questions I get asked about the fucking film that I am not even in,” he said at one point.