As the Hollywood actors’ strike comes to an end, shooting on Sir Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 is set to resume on December 4 in Malta.
Set after the events of the original movie, the sequel follows a grown-up Lucius, the nephew of Commodus, who was saved by Maximus.
Oscar-nominee Paul Mescal plays the older Lucius, originally portrayed by Spencer Treat Clark in 2000’s Gladiator.
The lead character is now living “in the wilderness” with no connection to his mother Lucilla (played by a returning Connie Nielsen) who he thinks may be dead.
Gladiator 2 co-stars Denzel Washington as a former slave turned arms dealer, alongside Sir Derek Jacobi as Senator Gracchus and a returning Djimon Hounsou as Juba the former gladiator. But what about Russell Crowe?
It’s possible that Maximus, now reunited with his family in the afterlife of Elysium, could somehow return.
Whatever the case, Scott has revealed his original plans to incorporate the return of Crowe’s most iconic character.
Speaking in a new interview to support the release of Napoleon, the 86-year-old shared how the dead gladiator would have been resurrected via a portal.
Scott told the ReelBlend podcast: “Nick Cave wrote the script, but I had the idea. I knew how to bring him back through a portal, back to the real world. I’m not going tell you what it is, because somebody will steal it… I talked to Nick every other day for about a month as he was writing it.
“And so I said, ‘We can bring him back this way.’ And what I want to do is start the film in Styx, on the edge of the ocean, and you see him, this warrior, wandering in armor. Then, it’s Maximus wandering, looking for where he’s going to go next. That’s Scene One.”
Gladiator 2 hits cinemas on November 22, 2024.