Gladiator 2 Finds Its Star

Paul Mescal, best known for his role in Normal People, is reportedly in talks to head up the sequel to Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning epic Gladiator. The plan is currently for Scott to return to direct from a script by David Scarpa. It has been about five years since serious reports about a sequel to Ridley Scott's Gladiator started to circulate, with the script being finished last spring. Back in 2021, Scott said that the sequel would be ready to go as his next feature film, but he had to finish Kitbag, a Napoleon biopic featuring Gladiator baddie Joaquin Phoenix, first. 

Per Deadline, who first reported the casting news, Mescal will be playing Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Now a grown man, Lucius has grown up with admiration for Maximus (Russel Crowe's character), who saved him and his mother. Maximus will not return for the film, since he died at the end of Gladiator -- but not before killing Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the son of Roman leader Marcus Aurelius and served as the principal antagonist of the first film.

"Oh, it's been written. It's already been written," Scott promised Collider last year. "We have a good footprint, a good, logical place to go. You can't just do another Gladiator type movie. You've got to follow...there's enough components from the first one to pick up the ball and continue it."

"First of all, I love doing period films. I love the research. I love to create sort of smells of the period," Scott said back in 2021."I think what we did with the first Gladiator…I don't like being critical of other things that have happened before, but I wasn't the biggest fan of Hollywood Roman epics, honestly. They felt artificial and so, when I was asked to consider a script, the script was not very good. But the person who gave it to me said, I want to show you one thing, and he picked up an illustration, this is true, it's called For Those About to Die by Gérôme. He holds it up. It's a picture of this big painting of the Coliseum, and in the corner there is this guy, about to tuna fork this poor bastard," Scott added. "He's got this thing in his neck, and he's looking up for permission to kill. I went, bloody hell, that's never been done properly before. Never. I said, I'll do it. He said you will? I said yes. Did you want to read the script? I said no, and we went off and hit the ground running around the table, and evolved the new material."

With casting seemingly underway it would not be surprising to hear some of he details about the film coming together pretty quickly in the coming weeks. Scott is set to produce the film, along with Scott Free President Michael Pruss, and Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher from Red Wagon Entertainment. Also returning from the original film are Janty Yates (Costume Designer) and Arthur Max (Production Designer).