No one was asking for Ridley Scott to make a sequel to his seminal film Gladiator, but the director did it anyway, and now we have the first trailer for Gladiator II, a sequel decades in the making.
The trailer opens with a series of flashbacks, revealing that this is indeed a sequel to the first film, though, interestingly, those flashbacks don’t have much of Russell Crowe’s Maximus character. The new film takes place long after the original, with a grown-up Lucius (Paul Mescal) fighting in the arena. Much like his father, Lucius is living a peaceful farm life when General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invades his home under the command of some really evil emperors. It looks like the nuance of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is going right out the window with these guys, and instead, the complex villain role will be handed off to Pascal’s character.
It also looks like there were plenty of prolific battles in the Colosseum, including a sea battle. That may seem ridiculous, but the Romans could actually flood the Coloseum and have ship battles on it. Things are definitely getting cranked up to the extreme this time around, judging from not just that battle but the one with the rhino as well. All of this plays out as Macinus (Denzel Washington) uses Lucius to ignite his own revolution, though his reasons seem less virtuous than Proximo’s in the original film.
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The highly anticipated film also stars Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Rory McCann, Lee Charles, Lior Raz, and Derek Jacobi. It is directed by Scott from a screenplay by David Scarpa based on a story by Scarpa and Peter Craig.
Gladiator II will hit theaters on November 22, 2024.
