Paul Mescal is headed into the arena. More than 20 years after the original Gladiator made over $460 million worldwide and won best picture at the Oscars, a sequel directed by Ridley Scott and starring Mescal is coming, a rep for the filmmaker confirms to Vanity Fair.
Scott will produce the follow-up, which is penned by David Scarpa (All the Money in the World), with costume designer Jenny Yates and production designer Arthur Max returning to their roles from the 2002 film. According to Deadline, Mescal was the first actor to meet with Scott about the lead role shortly after the script’s final draft was completed in November. Although the director continued to meet with other stars, “Mescal clearly was Scott’s top choice following a fantastic meeting,” the outlet reports.
The 26-year-old actor, who earned an Emmy nomination for Hulu’s Normal People and is currently garnering Oscar buzz in Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, will play Lucious, the grown son of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla. That solves the central problem of a Gladiator sequel—what is there left to explore after (spoiler alert) Russell Crowe’s Maximus dies saving Lucilla and her son from the villainous Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who also happens to be Lucious’ uncle?
Getting to more swords and sandals has been somewhat of a Colosseum-worthy battle. In 2018, the BBC delved into this outlandish development history, branding Gladiator’s the “strangest sequel never made.” In the years after the film’s smash success, both Scott and Crowe, who won the Academy Award for best actor, commissioned dueling concepts for a sequel. Scott reportedly enlisted John Logan, one of Gladiator’s writers for a follow-up without Crowe or gladiators themselves. Meanwhile, Crowe recruited singer-songwriter Nick Cave to write a script that his character could be in, cinematic death be damned. The supernatural final product featured Maximus in the afterlife and unsurprisingly died on the vine. “I enjoyed writing it very much because I knew on every level that it was never going to get made,” Cave would later admit.
Plans more recently got underway in 2018, when it was reported that Peter Craig (Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman) would pen the script. That iteration was seemingly scrapped in favor of the current vision, which Scott teased to Empire in 2021. “I’m already having [the next] Gladiator written now,” he said before referencing his upcoming Napoleon Bonaparte biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix. “So when I’ve done Napoleon, Gladiator will be ready to go.”
Savannah Walsh
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