Much has been made of Superman Lives, which would have starred Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel (and it got damn close to becoming a reality). Unfortunately, it will probably stay on the page, though we could see it existing on its own outside of the Gladiator banner.
It’s an intriguingly bizarre and visually arresting picture as written. Maximus ends up hunting gods, and leading wars across time - from the Crusades to the Pentagon. While the first was a gritty revenge epic set in ancient Rome, Gladiator 2 would have taken the now deceased Maximus into the afterlife on a quest to find his dead wife and son (who were murdered in the first film by Commodus). Why didn’t it get made? Our bet is that studios are leery of sequels that are structurally different from their predecessors. According to film essayist Devin Faraci, it made it further than the birthing stages and even had a fair amount of support from Ridley Scott himself, the original film’s director.
But no script embodies it more than Nick Cave’s Gladiator 2 - a script that, believe it or not, wasn’t just immediately laughed out of the pitch room. “Bats** crazy” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the movie world.
