Russell Crowe Initially Wanted To “Come Back From The Dead” In ‘Gladiator II,’ Ridley Scott Says

deadline.com:

Russell Crowe wanted to keep spectators entertained. While the Oscar-winning star of 2000’s Gladiator is not in the film’s follow-up, he did valiantly try to be.

According to helmer Ridley Scott, Crowe wanted to reincarnate his character of Maximus, the brave Colosseum fighter who expires at the end of the original epic. “Russell and I had a go at it around 18 years ago,” Scott told Peoplein a recent interview. “I had Nick Cave writing the script and I kept saying [to Russell], ‘But you’re dead.’ And he said, ‘I know I’m dead.

And I want to come back from the dead.'” Indeed, according to a 2018 BBC article, musician Nick Cave was commissioned by Crowe to pen a sequel, purportedly telling the scribe to “sort [his death] out” in the new film.

In the never-made-sequel, Maximus wakes in a purgatory of sorts filled with Roman gods who conscript his services in a revenge plot against another deity in exchange for a reunion with his long-deceased family (which Maximus longs for in the first film).