With Gladiator II set to be released in two months, let’s flash back to the absolutely bizarre Gladiator sequel we almost got.
In just two months, Gladiator II will be hitting theaters. However, Ridley Scott first began considering a Gladiator sequel two decades ago… and it would have been absolutely bizarre, bringing Maximus (Russell Crowe) back from the dead in a supernatural tale full of Roman gods and mythology.
After first considering a prequel about Maximus’s early days in the military and a sequel which focused on corruption and politics in Rome, Scott shifted gears when he tapped Nick Cave to pen the script. The result was unlike anything you would have expected.
The script for the proposed Gladiator sequel would have opened with Maximus awakening in the afterlife, but not the one he imagined in the first movie. Instead, it’s a rain-soaked purgatory filled with miserable souls. He meets a guide named Mordecai, who takes him to meet Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Pluto, Neptune, Mercury, and Bacchus. The deities aren’t looking so great as they’ve been betrayed by Hephaestus. They task Maximus with killing him, promising that they’ll reunite him with his wife and son if he does so. However, when Maximus does find Hephaestus, he suddenly finds himself back in the land of the living more than a decade after his own death. He rises out of the body of a dying Christian in the midst of a massacre led by Lucius, who has grown up to be just as evil as his uncle Commodus.
This persecution was inspired by a real-life event known as the Decian persecution, in which Emperor Decius issued an edict that required everyone in the Empire to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods and the well-being of the Emperor. Those who refused were either killed or forced into hiding. In Nick Cave’s script, this serves as a plot to expose Christians and supply victims to the Colosseum. Speaking of the Colosseum, it naturally makes a return, but it’s been flooded for a mock naval battle between gladiators and Christian prisoners. As we’ve seen in the trailers for Gladiator II, Scott was able to repurpose this scene.
Maximus later meets up with his son, Marius, who is now alive, as well as Juba, the former gladiator played by Djimon Hounsou in the first movie. Together, they train an army of Christian soldiers for an epic and bloody showdown with Lucius’ forces. The ending is perhaps crazier than anything else in the entire movie. We see a montage of Maximus fighting in battles throughout the centuries, including the Crusades, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. It ends with Maximus working at the modern-day Pentagon, cursed to participate in an unending cycle of conflict and bloodshed. According to Nick Cave, Russell Crowe’s reaction was brief, simply saying, “Don’t like it, mate.” Cave later said he enjoyed writing the script so much because he knew it was too crazy to get made. Sure enough, the script was rejected.
Could this Gladiator sequel have worked? Perhaps, but it would take another decade before Scott began entertaining the idea of returning to the world.
“From legendary director Ridley Scott, Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome,” reads the official Gladiator II synopsis. “Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.” The film is set to hit theaters on November 22nd.