Nick Cave ready! Gladiators ready!
Bad Seeds frontman and macabre bluesman Nick Cave had his proposed script for the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 blockbuster Gladiator rejected by the major studios, it has been revealed. With encouragement from the director and star Russell Crowe, Cave attempted to create a script that tried to pick up the seemingly final and resolved storyline of the first film.
Undeterred by the fact that Crowe’s character, Maximus, was dead and buried at the end of the first film, Cave put pen to paper. What resulted was a fantastical, jaw-dropping script that saw Maximus encounter the pantheon of Roman gods, lead tanks in World War II, fight in the Vietnam War, and finally wind up in the Pentagon.
Talking to UGO.com Ridley Scott said: “Russell didn’t want to let it go, obviously, because it worked very well. When I say ‘worked very well’, I don’t refer to success. I mean, as a piece it works very well. [As] storytelling, [it] works brilliantly. I think he enjoyed doing it, and I think it was one of those things that he thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s a sequel where we can adjust the fantasy and bring [Maximus] back from the dead.’”
So, while Nick Cave is undoubtedly one of the most talented songwriters of his generation, it seems that homoerotic sci-fi porn about eternal Romans is not his strongest suit.
