Ridley Scott Wants to Make GLADIATOR II

On a long enough timeline, Ridley Scott will make sequels to all of his films. With a little luck and some advances in science, we could be looking at Thelma & Louise Again, Blacker Rain, 1493, you name it. This week, however, at a SXSW event to promote Alien: Covenant, Sir Ridley was talking about a Gladiator sequel. He wants to make one, you see, and he’s not going to let something like the death of the film’s protagonist get in his way. As he tells EW:

“I know how to bring him back...I was having this talk with the studio — ‘but he’s dead.’ But there is a way of bringing him back. Whether it will happen I don’t know. Gladiator was 2000, so Russell’s changed a little bit. He’s doing something right now but I’m trying to get him back down here.”

First off, how polite! “Russell’s changed a little bit.” That’s something we say while being kind at high school reunions, bless his heart. More importantly, is Scott talking about Nick Cave’s bonkers sequel script that was written in 2009? The one where Maximus travels across time and ends up working in the Pentagon in the present? Odds are he probably isn’t. But the thing is, we live in a world where that Nick Cave sequel script exists, and I just don’t want any other sequel to Gladiator when I know this one could happen.

Read Scott Wampler’s account of Cave’s script here, and you too will agree.