‘You can see the money on screen’: why Hollywood is betting on Gladiator II not being another Folie à Deux

An actual-scale model of the Colosseum, flooded and filled with longboats. A two-tonne, eight-wheeled, lifesize rhino that can spin, snarl, wag its head and do 40mph. And as much minced beef, sweet potato and personal training as Paul Mescal can stomach. Such were some of the huge costs involved in the production of Gladiator II, which comes to cinemas next month, 24 years after Ridley Scott’s blockbusting original.

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Such conspicuous spending might be assumed to be making studio executives sweat, but Hollywood is banking on the film being a commercial success – particularly given the calamitous box office returns for another recent sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillip’s follow-up to his $1bn 2019 hit, now fast-tracked to streaming and projected to lose $200m.

Gladiator II’s headline-grabbing excess still adds up, says Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety. “You can see the money on screen,” he says. The opposite was true for Joker 2: “Had they shot it for $80m it would have been tremendously profitable. Instead they spent $200m on two people singing in a room.”

This, thinks Gaydos, was the folly of its director and of its stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, getting carried away with making the movie they wanted, rather than the one the audience wanted. Gladiator II, meanwhile, has been savvily tested and costed since its inception.

“There is so much computer modelling and predictive analysis today that Paramount would pretty much know what Gladiator is going to make,” says Gaydos. “If you put certain stars in a film [Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal join Mescal] and you call it Gladiator II, it’ll do $750m and have awards season play, which will mean extra screening life, so let’s do it.”

Meanwhile Scott, its director, now 86, has retained the work ethic and economic pragmatism of his early years in the ad industry, with few of the auteurist indulgences of peers such as Francis Ford Coppola or even Martin Scorsese. (Killers of the Flower Moon made even less back from its $200m budget at the theatrical box office than Joker 2.) Scott is sufficiently confident in the project to be already scripting the next sequel.

Canny cost-cutting also sweetened the deal: much of the movie was filmed in Malta, which contributed €47m in tax rebate – an EU record. Lucrative and strategic sponsorship tie-ins are in place too, including with Pepsi and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

Whatever the gamble was for Paramount, it looks almost certain to pay off. “The few people who’ve seen the film so far are rather bullish about it,” reports Gaydos. “It will clearly be a big hit with a solid critical reception.”

The template is Paramount’s 2022 blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick. Both are long-belated second instalments of smash hits by a Scott brother (Tony Scott shot Top Gun back in 1986). Both boast the same sweat-drenched, ab-packed, macho-sad, cross-demographic appeal that helped Tom Cruise’s film to a final total of $1.5bn plus six Oscar nominations, including best picture.

“Gladiator II will be a serious, legitimate contender in all major awards categories,” Gaydos predicts, citing for comparison Martin Scorsese’s overdue best director victory for 2007’s The Departed. “Now it’s time for Ridley. He’s never won, yet is clearly one of the greatest film-makers in the history of cinema.”

What we know about Gladiator II

Paul Mescal is playing Russell Crowe’s son
As all roads lead to Rome, so Gladiator II also sees a brave warrior forced into the arena to unseat effete rulers. This time round it’s Lucius Verus II (Mescal), who has been living peacefully in north Africa until a conquering army hastens his return home. There it’s revealed that he is actually the exiled son of Empressa Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), and his father is not the late Emperor Lucius Verus I but rather strapping martyr Maximus (Crowe).

Paul Mescal survives
Crowe might not have been so lucky, but Mescal’s character definitely doesn’t wind up fatally impaled by either sword or horn in Gladiator II, whose ending Scott has likened to that of The Godfather, “with Michael Corleone finding himself with a job he didn’t want, and wondering, ‘Now, Father, what do I do?’ So the next [film] will be about a man who doesn’t want to be where he is.”

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Russell Crowe isn’t in it
There are flashbacks, but a no-ghost rule seems to be in operation for the new film, with Russell Crowe neither involved nor consulted. Co-casualty Joaquin Phoenix also fails to make an appearance and it seems unlikely Oliver Reed has been reanimated for the event. However, Derek Jacobi is back.

It might have been quite different
Ideas for sequels have been kicking around for more than 20 years. One concept that reached a fairly advanced stage of development was called Christ Killer, scripted by Nick Cave, in which Maximus is resurrected from purgatory and sent back to Earth to kill Jesus. He then gets stuck into the Crusades, the second world war and Vietnam before finding employment at the Pentagon. Despite Crowe’s enthusiasm, the idea was eventually scrapped by the studio.