In 2000, the Ridley Scott movie “Gladiator” made a worldwide star out of Russell Crowe. The movie was nominated for 12 Oscars, and Russell Crowe won Best Actor, cementing his status as a heavyweight in Hollywood.
Now, 24 years later, Russell Crowe is literally a Hollywood heavyweight. However, time takes its toll on everyone. The weight gain hasn’t hurt Crowe’s career, but it likely wouldn’t have helped his odds had Ridley Scott decided to find a role for him in the Gladiator sequel recently announced.
He didn’t, and Crowe reveals in an interview with Collider magazine that he might be a little jealous: “Look, the only thing that I really feel about it is slightly jealous, you know? Because I was a much younger man, obviously, and it was a huge experience in my life.”
Considering it isn’t known if Scott was considering Crowe for a role, or if he even could have considering not much is known about the plot, remains to be seen. Crowe continued to reminisce about his role with Collider: “It’s something that changed my life, really. It changed the way people regarded me and what I do for a living, and, you know, I’ve been very lucky to be involved in lots of big movies, but the legs on that film are incredible. You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart.”
Russell Crowe reveals how he really feels about new 'Gladiator' movie https://t.co/XfwS4igbIU
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 11, 2023
Now at 59, casting Crowe in a new gladiator movie seems to be quite a stretch, perhaps more so than the costumes would be on the legendary actor. Crowe is currently promoting his latest movie, “The Pope’s Exorcist”, so he is keeping busy.
The actor admits that he really has no idea what direction Ridley Scott is taking the film. He told Collider: “I don’t really know where they’re going to go with it. I’m sure that [there have] been things on [Scott’s] mind for the last 24 years that he thinks he can probably do better or something,” he said. “I think that’s one of the positives about it, for sure, that it is Ridley. Because he’s going to want to go back into that world and create something the same level of spectacle as the first one.”
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Ridley Scott, the famed director of the Alien movies as well as Gladiator could be looking to make one last great, sweeping epic to cap his career, but how much woke content will the new movie have? That is an important question, as most new Hollywood offerings have tanked when they include too much overt wokeness. Has Ridley learned from other directors’ mistakes?
Based on a 2020 conversation Crowe had with the Australian show “Today” about Gladiator and the kind of director Scott is, perhaps he will. Crowe had this to say: “I watched that movie, and it is a director’s film. It was one of those moments of, ‘Why did I get all the attention, when the Academy Award belongs to Ridley Scott?’”
Scott has never won the Oscar for Best Director, but if he can pull off a Gladiator sequel without ruining it with subtle woke themes, maybe he will finally get his statue, and we will get a blockbuster, popcorn flick to look forward to.