Ridley Scott says the script for the long-awaited follow-up to his 2000 Russell Crowe-led film Gladiator is already in the process of being written and is inching closer to the top of his priority list.
“I’m already having [the next] Gladiator written now,” the 83-year-old Oscar-nominated director told Empire magazine. “So when I’ve done Napoleon, Gladiator will be ready to go.”
The sequel was first announced in November 2018 and is slated to follow Lucius, the son of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla and nephew of Joaquin Phoenix’s power-hungry and immoral Commodus. Both Lucilla and Lucius were saved by Crowe’s Maximus from the embittered Roman emperor before the gladiator passed on to be with his own slain family.
While promoting Men in Black: International, producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald told HeyUGuys that the film would be picking up around 25 years after the original.
Paramount is behind the film, with Top Gun: Maverick and The Batman scribe Peter Craig writing the screenplay. It will follow Scott’s work on Kitbag, his Napoleon drama that explores the famed French military and political leader’s rise to power.
That film will see the director reteam with both Phoenix and Jodie Comer, who is starring alongside Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Scott’s The Last Duel. The 20th Century Studios historical drama, based on the last legally sanctioned duel in France’s history, is slated for an Oct. 15 release.
Scott’s second film this year is the Lady Gaga and Adam Driver-led biographical drama House of Gucci, which also stars Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek and Al Pacino and is slated to release in November.
