gladiator

Gladiator 2 Still a Priority for Ridley Scott

While speaking with Douglas Wick about Gladiator during its 20th anniversary, the producer said the first answer to any question should be having Ridley Scott in the meeting. Apparently that holds true for the long-gestating Gladiator 2 as well, which Wick confirmed is still very much alive. “Yes, we’re working on it, and we’ve just all vowed that we’ll only proceed if we get something great on paper,” Wick tells me about the possible sequel. “We’re too respectful of the first movie to ever do anything cynical.” The idea of a Gladiator 2 has been floating around since almost the…
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Why Gladiator Continues to Echo Through Eternity

French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 painting of gladiators and spectators, “Pollice Verso,” remains one of the defining portraits of ancient Rome. With its depiction of two fighters in the Colosseum, one standing and the other vanquished, pleading for mercy, it works as a paradox: The viewer is given both a sense of moral superiority over the distant past and a discreet delight as the crowd lowers their thumbs in bloodlust, demanding death. Historically accurate or not, it sets imaginations aflutter, and it alone convinced Ridley Scott to direct Gladiator. Producer Douglas Wick remembers that well. After all, it did lead…
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