Ridley Scott almost made ‘Gladiator II’ a musical with Russell Crowe and Nick Cave: “I was going along with the boys”

nme.com:

Ridley Scott has revealed that he almost made Gladiator II into a musical, but it ultimately never came to fruition.The filmmaker told Deadline that the Gladiator sequel was going to be a musical and see Russell Crowe reprising his role of Maximus – despite the character dying in the first film.The concept involved Nick Cave, who worked with Crowe to come up with a storyline focusing on Maximus “being sent back to Earth by the gods to kill Jesus Christ and his followers because he was stealing their thunder,” but Scott decided it was “bloody silly.”The director explained: “Nick Cave did a great job of invention and Russell was fully engaged.

We all were, but I was the one dragging my feet. I was like, ‘I dunno about this.’ I thought we were getting too far off the mark, and if you do that, that’s where you can lose it.”He added: “I was going along with the boys.

I didn’t really believe in it. It got too rich and started to go to time warps, which frankly I thought was bloody silly. But the one thing I added to it was this great idea of [opening] a portal of time in death, and it would have to come from the dying soul of a dying soldier in a battlefield.

Isn’t that cool? I kept it as a little silver bullet, thinking, ‘I’ll use that again somewhere.’”In the end, Gladiator II, which arrived in cinemas today (November 15) in the UK and will premiere in the US on November 22, is rather more conventional.