We know what your first question is. Didn't Maximus, hero of Russell Crowe's star-making blockbuster, die at the end of Gladiator? He did indeed, and back in 2009, when his friend Russell commissioned him to write the sequel, screenwriter Nick Cave had the same question. Crowe's reply: "Yea, you sort that out."
Working from those specific instructions, Cave cooked up the spectacularly titled Gladiator 2: Christ Killer. During a recent guest appearance on the "WTF With Marc Maron" podcast, he gave a synopsis of the script, and why you'll probably never see it in your multiplex. Hint: because it's bonkers.
Cave's script sees Maximus in Purgatory, commissioned by Roman gods to return to Earth and kill a Christ-like deity with a steadily increasing following, a turn of events that is literally killing them off. Interested yet? We haven't even gotten to the craziest part. As Cave tells it, a mid-film twist would reveal "that the main guy was his son so he has to kill his son and he was tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild."
Of course, there's no way in Hades the producers of the original were going to sign off on this, but apparently Ridley Scott dug it, and he claims Russell did too! Cave has a conflicting statement, admitting that Crowe had an improbably simple response to the mind-fuck of a script: "Don't like it, mate."
We can say with near-certainty that this movie, which Cave humbly declared a "stone-cold masterpiece," will never see the light of day. Does it deserve to? You can decide for yourself - the script leaked online a few years ago.
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[via IndieWire]
