Ridley Scott already has a plan for "Gladiator 3" and this time he doesn't intend to wait 2 decades to go ahead with his action epic, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
Gladiator II ends with Lucius (played by Paul Mescal) having won the support of the army and defeated the villain Macrinus (Denzel Washington) after killing the two emperors, Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger). The finale gives a weary Lucius the opportunity to seize power for himself.
Scott says the sequel will draw inspiration from "The Godfather Part II," where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is now the undisputed leader of organized crime and must decide how far he'll go to keep his crown.
"He's already got an idea," Scott told The Hollywood Reporter. "I always had the idea that 'The Godfather' ends with Michael not wanting to do his job."
Scott added to Premiere magazine, "The next movie will be about a guy who doesn't want to be where he is." The director told Total Film that he has already written 8 pages of the script for the Gladiator sequel.
Of course, any movie called "Gladiator" has to somehow figure out a way to get its hero back into the arena. Even if Lucius becomes emperor, being emperor certainly didn't stop Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) from the first film from eventually stepping on sand.
For his part, Mescal said he's willing to accept the role a second time "I don't think it'll be in 24 years, but I have no idea when it will be," the actor told Variety.
He hinted that the emperor from the first film, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), was a source of potential inspiration for Lucius' story. Although the first film portrayed the character quite sympathetically, and Aurelius' writings on stoicism have become quite fashionable of late, Scott is quite critical of the historical figure. "You have to put Aurelius next to today's demagogues," he says. "And I think he felt guilty about what he did - hence his writings in Meditations."
When THR asked Scott if he had ever considered a different fate for any of his main characters in Gladiator II, the director said he hadn't. | BGNES
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