Gladiator 2 Is On Deck For Ridley Scott And I Gotta Ask: Why?

While Kitbag will be no small undertaking, Scott already has Maximus on his mind too – finally, long-gestating plans for a sequel to his 2000 masterpiece seem to be gaining traction. “I’m already having [the next] Gladiator written now,” he says. “So when I’ve done Napoleon, Gladiator will be ready to go.” That’s quite a roster, Ridders – consider us entertained.

ICYMI, I accidentally spoke this sequel into existence back in November of 2018. I had written about how Gladiator 2 had been shopped around, and how the idea for the movie was that Maximus comes back to life and starts fighting all the wars throughout history like Logan in the intro scene for ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’.

Personally, I have a very strong feeling that this isn't going to be the idea for the movie. Where does this sequel go, though? Maximus is dead, so who do they follow? Lucius? Do they set him up to be deposed and put into a gladiator situation of his own? Or do they make a new gladiator to follow? A "relevant" sequel that comes to mind with this is 300: Rise of an Empire. Now, 300 is on a very different quality tier than Gladiator and I might just be making the comp because of the Antiquity setting. But I think they have a similar vibe in that the charismatic main character of the original is dead and that there just isn't anything there to work with.

There is also the more important point: Gladiator was a fucking excellent movie, so why revisit it after all this time? I think it is possible that Scott saw Blade Runner 2049, which was a superb late-sequel to his original movie, and thinks he can maybe get the same level of success. He also might just be looking to rebound from the "failed" revival of Alien with Prometheus(which I liked!) and Alien:Covenant(which I did not much care for). But I think the difference between Gladiator and Alien is that Alien had failed sequels already, including Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and the two Alien vs. Predator movies. So seeing an Alien movie that wasn't a pile of shit was refreshing in itself. Gladiator, however, has been untouched since releasing in 2000.

Personally, I would rather Gladiator remain untouched. It was built on the back of the brilliant performances from Crowe and Phoenix, and I don't think I wan't to see a Gladiator property without them. That said, the more I think about a Gladiator sequel that is on par with Blade Runner 2049, the more my giblits start moving. 

Also, here is more on the Napoleon movie Scott is doing with Joaquin Phoenix