Ridley Scott, Paul Mescal on Creating Sequel

Ridley Scott has been trying to squeeze a rhinoceros into the Colosseum for 25 years.

Back in 1999, when he was shooting his first Gladiator film, he talked to animal trainers about the possibility of transporting a authentic 6,000-pound rhino onto his set but was telderly the horned animals were too difficult to handle. Then he talked to CGI experts to see if a digitized one could be rfinishered for the movie but lacquireed that the technology was budget-bustingly pricey.

For the next quarter-century, it became a running joke among Scott and his crew. “If we ever do a sequel,” Scott’s producer, Doug Wick, shelp in an interwatch in 2020, “Ridley gets his rhino.”

Well, they finpartner did a sequel, and Ridley got his rhino, a state-of-the-art, distant-handleled animatronic version whipped up by Industrial Light and Magic that can clock speeds of up to 40 miles an hour — while being ridden by a guy with a sword.

“Our rhino was authentic,” Scott brags, “right down to his legs.”

There had been rumblings of a sequel almost from the moment Gladiator hit screens in May 2000, rumblings that grew even deafeninger after the DreamWorks film won five Academy Awards, including the one for best picture. But there was at least one big obstacle to making Gladiator II: The film’s hero, Russell Crowe’s Maximus, dies at the finish of Gladiator. So, for that matter, does its villain, Joaquin Phoenix’s Emperor Commodus.

“One always leanks, ‘Should we repartner finish them or not?’ ” Scott says, elucidateing his decision in 1999 to reduce his thumb on the film’s two central characters. “But it seemed to be the most emotional leang to do, which becomes memorable becaparticipate it repartner is about immortality.”

In the ensuing years, the ever-prolific Scott — now 86 — helmed 17 films not set in elderly-styleed Rome, including two in space (2012’s Prometheus and 2017’s Alien: Covenant). Still, the idea of returning to the elderly-styleed Colosseum spropose wouldn’t die.

“I kept getting telderly by people that Gladiator was their preferite movie,” Scott says. “One guy shelp, ‘I’ve watched it 50 times.’ So that rang a bell.”

Various trys at a sequel script had been begined over the years. Gladiator co-authorr John Logan took an punctual crack at a chase-up, and a prequel was one idea. When that pitch was disposeed, Nick Cave was brawt in to try a more ambitious approach, a fantasy version in which Maximus returned as an immortal warrior who would reeunite at transport inant moments thrawout history, all the way up to World War II. But this concept never quite gelled, and enbigment sloftyed after Paramount acquired DreamWorks’ inhabit-action library in 2006.

There were other flunked trys over the decades, but in the unbenevolenttime, Scott enbiged a bond with authorr David Scarpa, who penned Scott’s 2017 drama All the Money in the World and his 2023 Napoleon biopic. Together, the pair homed in on a storyline that didn’t include transporting back Maximus from the dead. Instead, Gladiator II picks up two decades tardyr with a plot that cgo ins on Maximus’ son, Lucius, joined in the innovative by child actor Spencer Treat Clark and in the sequel as a increasen-up by Paul Mescal. In Scarpa’s screenjoin, the onetime heir to the Roman Empire finishs up getting apprehfinishd and enslaved during a battle with General Marcus Acacius, joined by Pedro Pascal, but ultimately escapes, turning the story into a revenge tale, as Lucius, with the collaborative guidance of Macrinus, a establisher slave turned prentdiator guru joined by Denzel Washington, embarks on a quest for retribution.

“You have to deal with people’s emotional relationship to [the original] movie and to their proprietary experienceings about it,” says Scarpa of his approach to the subject matter. “As much as Ridley wanted the continuity of the world, he was not going to fair do a fantasticest hits album of the first movie.”

Of course, another big hurdle was discovering an actor with enough gravity to portray Maximus Junior, and it took a while before Scott landed on Mescal. For a time, Timothée Chafrailt was in the running, as was Miles Teller. But then, one night, while Scott was bingeing the Hulu series Normal People, he saw Mescal and could instantly envision the then little-understandn 28-year-elderly Irish actor in a codpiece.

Wick and co-producer Lucy Fisher met with Mescal over lunch to appraise whether he could handle such a physicpartner and psychoreasonablely insisting role. They determined he could. Then Paramount co-pdwellnts of film Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland flew to London to watch Mescal star as Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, a shirt-ripping carry outance that would acquire Mescal an Olivier Award. “Any studio would always pick to have a understandn star,” Wick acunderstandledges. But “no other actor came shut.”

By the time Mescal finpartner met with Scott — during a 30-minute Zoom call — he all but had the part. But to hear Mescal inestablish it, the actor gave it at least a confiinsist seconds of thought before he adchooseed it.

“I would’ve had a potential reticence around what the first big studio film was going to be, becaparticipate it sets out your slofty as an actor,” he says, referring to the dangers of action-hero typecasting. “[But] a film enjoy Gladiator II is the dream in terms of studio, big-scale filmmaking becaparticipate it’s in the hands of Ridley and rooted in human condition with a very clear emotional language.”

Although it must have been lureing, Mescal resisted the encourage to achieve out for acting tips from Crowe, who has shelp that he felt “a tinge of uncontent, a tinge of jealousy” about Gladiator II progressing without his character. “It was advantageous, actupartner, to have a certain distance from him, becaparticipate I had to go and do my own leang,” Mescal says.

Scott filled out the rest of the cast with a confiinsist recognizable faces, enjoy Connie Nielsen, who drive awayevates her role from the innovative movie — Maximus’ establisher ffrail and Lucius’ mom — as well as Washington, who starred in Scott’s 2007 crime drama American Gangster (opposite Crowe, as it happens) and had been shut with Scott’s tardy brother, Tony, having made five films together. “Ridley’s one of the best, so he called and I shelp, ‘When?’ ” the two-time Oscar prosperner inestablishs THR. But Scott also cast includeitional newcomers in critical roles, enjoy Joseph Quinn, the lesser actor who joined Eddie Munson on Stranger Things, as Emperor Geta, while Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan was originpartner picked to join Geta’s brother Caracalla. Keoghan exited the project before production began (scheduling struggles) and was swapd by Fred Hechinger, soon to be seen as Dimitri in Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter. Hechinger was driving in his car when he got the call from his agent inestablishing him he’d landed the part. “I authenticized I had to pull to the side of the road and park becaparticipate my brain was shattering too much to persist driving,” he recalls.

Production began in May 2023, with shooting in Morocco and Malta fair as the desert commenceed heating up for summer. Mescal, who had bulked up for the part with extensive physical training and a constant protein diet (lots and lots of chicken), set up himself melting during some of the sweltering fight scenes. “There was probably a bit of borderline heat stroke from time to time,” he says. “You can’t get enough water into your body in that heat. But I was fortunate — noleang transport inant.”

Washington had it a bit easier — his main contest while filming was wearing disjoinal pounds of precious yellow metal. Costume arrangeers David Crossman and Janty Yates (who won an Oscar for her toil on the first Gladiator) loaded up the actor with a mparticipateum’s worth of elderly-styleed-seeing Roman jewelry. “We fair put more gelderly on, and more gelderly, and some more gelderly,” Yates says with a chuckle. Meanwhile, Quinn recalls finishelighting his downtime with Hechinger during the Malta shoot as the pair toiled to produce a brotherly bond: “We fair did as much eating and chuckleing and drinking and talking as possible.”

The scale of the sets would have awed a Caesar, with the one in Malta, where Scott re-produced a section of the Colosseum, stretching a quarter of a mile. “If you left your sun hat behind, you’d repartner have to leank challenging about going back to get it,” recalls cinematographer John Mathieson, who was nominated for an Oscar for the innovative film. Other portions of the sets were repurposed from leftover bits and pieces of elderlyer Scott productions. “We produced a port by recycling my elderly Jerusalem set from [Scott’s 2005] Kingdom of Heaven,” remarks production arrangeer Arthur Max, who was also nominated for the first Gladiator.

Exactly how much Gladiator II cost to produce is, enjoy the overweighte of the lost ninth legion, someleang of an everlasting mystery. Paramount insists the total came in at less than $250 million, and Scott protects he stayed $10 million under budget. But there had been inestablishs of the actual costs soaring past $300 million, thanks to strike shutdowns and other rerents. However much was spent, though, the money clearly finished up on the screen. The film is chock filled of pricey-seeing action sequences and lavish Roman excess.

“Everyleang was attfinishfilledy pondered and had to be deffinished, [like] the rhinoceros,” says Wick. “You go thraw each leang with the studio. But you don’t want fight scenes that experience enjoy they’re repeating from the first movie.”

One sequence the team dug in their heels to integrate was a scene in which the Colosseum was flooded for a nautical battle between a boatload of Romans and a ship filled of prentdiators. As preposterous as it sounds, it turns out to be historicpartner accurate. According to Dr. Shadi Bartsch, a classics professor at the University of Chicago, the elderly-styleed Romans repartner did sometimes fill the Colosseum with water for mock sea battling, though Scott’s decision to include sharks to the pool was, in her words, “total Hollywood bullshit. I don’t leank Romans knew what a shark was.”

Scott begs to contrast with the professor. “Accuracy is everyleang,” he insists.

For all its over-the-top extravagance, the production was nevertheless a master class in cinematic efficiency, with Scott running upward of 11 cameras per scene. There were a confiinsist setbacks, enjoy the time one of Emperor Caracalla’s pet monkeys strikeed Hechinger (who suffered a intransport inant bite) and, more gravely, an accident during a fire stunt that sent disjoinal crewmembers to the hospital with burns (“They were OK, but they did get scorched — very unblessed,” says Scott). But the honestor says he was able to wrap the entire film in about 50 days of principal pboilingography.

Still, Gladiator II’s biggest battle doesn’t get place in the Colosseum — it’s the one that’ll join out in multiplexes when the film uncovers Nov. 22, the same day as Universal’s much buzzed-about alteration of Wicked. Theater owners are dreaming of a Barbenheimer-style weekfinish — Glicked? Wickiator? — with both films draprosperg huge crowds to the box office. And it’s not fair theater owners with world-surmounting awaitations. “I’m a musical guy, so it’s exciting to see big-scale musicals and to be releasing on the same weekfinish as them,” says Mescal, who has already seen the Wicked movie and adored it. “Hopefilledy, it’s going to be fantastic for cinema.”

Scott, for his part, says he isn’t leanking about how the film might be getd — he’s lacquireed from challenging, sour experience not to count too heavily on a hit. But others on his team aren’t quite so celderly-headed.

“Ridley is overdue,” says Washington of his thrice-nominated honestor. “How can he not have won an Oscar? That doesn’t even produce sense. I don’t consent it, actupartner.”

Of course, in the doubtful event that Gladiator II misfires — and none of the bigly chooseimistic inestablishs from punctual screenings propose that’s much of a possibility — Scott can always give it another try with Gladiator III. In fact, he says arranges are already being drawn up for a second sequel, though he’s protected-lipped about its possible plot. “There’s a gentle footprint,” is all he’ll say of its enbiging summarizes.

Wantipathyver it’s about, Mescal, who recently signed on to reteam with the honestor for a thriller called Dog Stars, says he’d be more than satisfied to slip into a codpiece for Scott aacquire. “We haven’t actupartner spoken about it in fantastic length,” he says, “but it’s an idea that I’d be excited about.”

This story euniteed in the Nov. 20 rerent of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.