Russell Crowe has a grim reminder for everyone looking forward to Gladiator 2. It was announced back in 2018 that Ridley Scott was moving forward with the long-talked about sequel. However, we really haven’t heard too many updates since then, which leads one to wonder if it will be happening at all. A recent interview with actress Connie Nielson revealed that talks are ongoing, with everybody waiting on Scott’s schedule to become open, along with waiting for the entertainment industry to get back to work.
While there have been discussions about Gladiator 2, Russell Crowe admits that he has not been part of any conversations. It’s been 20 years since Gladiator hit theaters and Crowe still has fond memories about working in the movie and its lasting impact. With that said, he does have a reminder for people when thinking about a sequel. Crowe explains.
“I can tell you those conversations have been going on since the last day of shooting the last one and there’s been a lot of different ideas of approaching things… I keep being like this sort of party pooper when I say, I just wanted to remind you I died in the first one. So, I don’t really know. This far away, could we play with that? We could…”
While Russell Crowe hasn’t taken part in Gladiator 2 talks as of yet, that doesn’t mean that he won’t at some point down the line. For now, he enjoys talking about the first installment, which scored 11 Academy Award nominations and took home 5 of them, including Best Picture and the Best Actor for Crowe. The actor had this to say about Gladiator’s cultural impact.
“To have a film in your career where 20 years after, doesn’t matter what day of the week it is, somewhere in the world it’s still playing on primetime TV. It’s amazing. We certainly, when we were making it, we never would have expected it to have the legs that it had. In fact, while we were making it, it was chaos.”
When it comes down to it, the production for Gladiator was set up for efficiency, though Russell Crowe didn’t think so at the time. But, as time went on, Crowe, along with the rest of the cast and crew, started to get into a groove, thanks to director Ridley Scott. Crowe also notes that there was a lot of collaboration going down on the set. You can read what he had to say below.
“The schedule was very helpful in that regard because we were literally making shit up as we went. There’s no two ways about it. Every actor was involved in the process of creation and sort of adjusting their characters and building their characters. But [director] Ridley [Scott] had just created such a rich world for us all to exist in and as every actor came in the door, they just accepted that world and accepted that we were all going to be wearing funny costumes and talking in a funny way and just bought into it.”
Gladiator 2 will reportedly follow the continuing story of Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Ridley Scott is set to return to the director’s chair with a screenplay written by Peter Craig, whose credits include The Town and two Hunger Games installments. As for when production will start on the sequel, that is a mystery for the time being, but we should receive an update in the near future, with or without Russell Crowe. The interview with Crows was originally conducted by E! Online.
