The film's star, Russell Crowe, approached Cave about the idea almost a decade ago but suits at DreamWorks were not all that interested.
It seems like the script may have worked for a stand alone film, but it didn't fit into the narrative of the first film.
Cave says:
"For someone who had only written one film script, it was quite an ask. ‘Hey Russell, didn’t you die in Gladiator 1?’ ‘Yeah, you sort that out.’ So, he [Maximus] goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there’s this one god, there’s this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers. I wanted to call it ‘Christ Killer’ and in the end you find out 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 twenty minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild. It was a stone cold masterpiece. I enjoyed writing it very much because I knew on every level that it was never going to get made. Let’s call it a popcorn dropper."
The original film is one of my favorite films--I had forgotten that a sequel was even being discussed back then. I find it facinsating that Cave knew it was going hard sell,
No comments:
Post a Comment