MOVIE NEWS – The 2nd budget for Gladiator has gone down, reports The Hollywood Reporter citing well-informed but unnamed sources. The production originally planned for 165 million dollars is said to cost almost 310 million. According to the information leaked from the producer Paramount studio, it was really necessary to spend more, but the 49-day shooting still cost less than 250 million.

The increase in price can be partly attributed to last summer’s Hollywood strikes, filming had to be stopped, which meant a weekly loss of 600,000 dollars, the total loss was roughly ten million dollars.

Bad luck accompanied the shoot anyway. In June, four stuntmen were burned and hospitalized, fortunately their injuries were not life-threatening. A month later, the international animal protection organization PETA sent an open letter to director-producer Ridley Scott, complaining about the cruel treatment of horses and monkeys on the set. The answer to this was that there is no such thing as a guarantee, the staff of another animal protection organization, the Humane Society, are present on the set.

Gladiator 2 picks up the plot of the Oscar-winning first part roughly twenty years later. The new protagonist is Lucius (Paul Mescal) who has grown up from the blond boy of the first film, the return of Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi, the probably negative hero Emperor Caracalla and is played by Joseph Quinn. An important role also goes to Denzel Washington, who plays a freed gladiator; his character can be a kind of knowledgeable mentor, like Proximo, played by Oliver Reed, was in the previous episode.

(Gladiator 2. – domestic release: November 21, 2024.)