Universal
Similar to Martin Scorsese (who’s actually five years younger), despite the fact that Ridley Scott — director of legendary films such as Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, and The Martian — is now 82-years-old, he remains as prolific as ever, as he’s directed seven films over the last decade, with an eighth, The Last Duel, set to be released later this year.
Still, Scott knows he can’t direct forever, so if he’s going to ever make a sequel to Gladiator, perhaps his most widely beloved film, then it needs to be in the next few years.
The rumors of a Gladiator sequel have been floating around the internet for some time now — we even published about it back in 2018. This time, though, the wheels seem to finally be turning, as Doug Wick, one of the film’s producers, recently said that Scott was working on the script for the sequel.
“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,” producer Doug Wick said.
“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.” [via Comic Book]
The original Gladiator, which launched Russell Crowe to superstardom and racked in five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a Best Actor win for Crowe. Culturally, I’d argue Gladiator in the conversation of being one of the millennial generation’s favorite movies, so I’d imagine the movie-going public would happily accept any Scott-directed sequel.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com