New images from Gladiator II offer the first looks at Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington in Ridley Scott’s upcoming sequel epic.
Gladiator II is the upcoming sequel to 2000’s Gladiator, which was directed by Scott and starred Russell Crowe. The new movie, which releases in November, sees Mescal playing a character named Lucius Verus, while Washington is playing Macrinus and Pascal is playing Marcus Acacius.
Check out the new images Vanity Fair shared for Gladiator II, via DiscussingFilm, below:
Who else stars in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II?
Along with Mescal, Pascal, and Washington, Gladiator II sees Connie Nielsen reprise her role as Lucius’ mother, Lucilla. It also stars Derek Jacobi, Joseph Quinn, and Fred Hechinger.
Mescal said of his character in Gladiator II, “He wants nothing to do with the image of Rome. He wants nothing to do with it other than to tear it apart initially. The Romans were some savage, savage individuals. They would go from continent to continent and just destroy communities and nations. The film doesn’t shy away from the kind of brutality of that, and the emperors at the center of it, and this kind of corrupted power that he can see through. There’s a wonderful clarity to him. He’s unafraid of the establishment in a way that makes him dangerous to the establishment.”
Scott said that Gladiator II starts with Lucius living a peaceful life in Numidia with his wife and child after being sent away when he was a young boy.
“He’s a blue-eyed, fair-skinned man with red hair, and he couldn’t be more different from the inhabitants,” Scott commented. “It’s one of the last surviving civilizations, as the Romans begin to descend in North Africa and take it all over.”
Pascal’s character, meanwhile, is a Roman general who was trained under Crowe’s Maximus, while Washington’s Macrinus is “an arms dealer who supplies food for the armies in Europe” who owns “a stable of gladiators,” Scott said.
Gladiator II releases in United States theaters on November 22, 2024, from Paramount Pictures.
