Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 is resuming production.
Per Variety, Scott’s Gladiator 2 is headed back into production in Malta on December 4, 2023. The movie was over halfway done filming when production shut down in July 2023 because of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike, which ended on November 9, 2023.
What do we know about Gladiator 2?
Serving as a sequel to 2000’s Gladiator, which was directed by Scott and starred Russell Crowe, Gladiator 2 will be focused on Commodus’ nephew, Lucius.
Aftersun’s Paul Mescal is playing Lucius in the movie, while Connie Nielsen is reprising her role as Lucius’ mother, Lucilla. Derek Jacobi and Djimon Hounsou are also reprising their respective roles as Senator Gracchus and Juba.
The returning cast will be joined by Denzel Washington, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Pedro Pascal, May Calamawy, Lior Ray, Peter Mensah, and Matt Lucas.
David Scarpa, who previously collaborated with Scott on 2017’s All the Money in the World and 2023’s Napoleon, wrote the screenplay for Gladiator 2. Scott produces the movie alongside Michael Pruss, Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher, and David Franzoni.
Speaking to Deadline about why he was interested in making a sequel to Gladiator, Scott said, “Well, economically, it makes sense. That always begins there. I thought the [first] film was, as it were, completely satisfactory, creatively complete, so why muck with it, right? But these cycles keeps going on and on and on, they repeat globally for the last 20 years. It started to spell itself out as an obvious thing to do, and that’s how it evolved. The hardest thing is getting the footprint right with the writer. There was a very obvious way to go, which was who’s the survivor? Well, the survivor could be Connie, Marcus’ daughter, but what’s even more interesting, and therefore a double whammy, there’s the son. Whatever happened to him? It became about that, and that’s Paul Mescal. It’s 20 years on. That was harder than casting Russell as Maximus, that was more obvious.”
Gladiator 2 is scheduled to be released in United States theaters on November 22, 2024.
