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Nick Cave talks his insane Gladiator sequel

Crowe asked singer-turned-screenwriter to write second film.

Cave... reveals details of his Gladiator sequel (Copyright: Rex)

Nick Cave has revealed details of the sequel that he penned for 'Gladiator'.

The singer-turned-screenwriter was asked by Russell Crowe to pen a script for the film, but it was ultimately rejected by the studio.

And now it's emerged why...

“(Crowe) rang me up and asked if I wanted to write 'Gladiator 2',” Cave told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast.


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“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 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',” he added, “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 20 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 weird sequels that were almost made]


Director Ridley Scott has added that despite the high-concept, the script worked well.

“We tried (to work with Cave's screenplay),” Scott told UGO.com. “Russell didn't want to let it go, obviously, because it worked very well. When I say 'worked very well', I don't refer to success. I mean, as a piece it works very well. (As a piece of) storytelling, (it) works brilliantly.

“I think (Cave) enjoyed doing it, and I think it was one of those things that he thought, 'Well, maybe there's a sequel where we can adjust the fantasy and bring (Crowe's character) back from the dead'.”

Someone needs to make this sequel happen...

Cave, who made his fame as a singer with his band The Bad Seeds, first moved into screenwriting by penning the outback thriller 'The Proposition' in 2004.