Ridley Scott’s Academy Award-winning epic historical drama Gladiator is getting a sequel. Deadline reports that Scott recently began working on the follow-up with Paramount Studios being the most likely landing spot for the project. Peter Craig, who is working on another Paramount’s sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, will write the script for Gladiator 2.
Gladiator sequel will reportedly focus on Lucius, son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). In the original movie, Commodus kills Lucius’ father to take over the throne of Rome for himself and throws the boy in the gladiator ring. Spencer Treat Clark played Lucius in the original.
While this is excellent news for everyone who liked Gladiator, we shouldn’t expect the sequel to hit the theaters anytime soon given the fact that the project is still in early development.
Released in 2000, Gladiator tells the story of Hispano-Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) who gets betrayed by Commodus, the son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and ends up as a slave forced to fight in the gladiatorial arena. The movie was a big hit with the critics while earning $460 million at the box office compared to a $100 million budget. It received 12 Academy Award nominations and won five of them, including Best Picture and Best Actor award for Russell Crowe.
The plans to make a sequel, which would be set fifteen years after the events of the original and would focus on Lucius, were first revealed in 2002. There was also an idea to do a sequel, for which the script was written by musician Nick Cave, where Crowe’s character would be resurrected by Roma gods, but this was eventually rejected as far-fetched.
