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Russell Crowe has expressed his reservations about the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.
The actor, 60, confessed to feeling “slightly uncomfortable” about the project moving forward without his involvement.
In a recent interview with Kyle Meredith, the Oscar-winning star said, “I’m slightly uncomfortable with the fact they’re making another one — because, of course, I’m dead and I have no say in what gets done. But a couple of the things I’ve heard I’m like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not in the moral journey of that particular character’. But I can’t say anything, it’s not my place, I’m six foot under. So we’ll see what that is like.”
In the Gladiator movie from 2000, Crowe portrayed Roman general Maximus. Scott also directed the movie, which follows his character as he seeks revenge on the dishonest monarch who killed his family and sold him into slavery.
“I reflect back: the age I was when I made that film and all the things that came after it, the doors that particular movie opened for me,” the Les Misérables actor continued.
“This is just me being purely honest: there’s definitely a tinge of melancholy, a tinge of jealousy. I remember when I had tendons.”
In the follow-up, Paul Mescal plays the title character, adult Lucius, who was originally portrayed in the film as the impressionable nephew of Commodus, the Roman Emperor (played at the time by Joaquin Phoenix).
The movie is “definitely the biggest one I’ve done,” he said to Esquire last year.
“I feel really excited, but, like, it’s difficult to get away from the legacy of the film a bit,” Mescal explained.
“I think it’s really well written and it pays homage to the first one, but it’s very much something that I think I can step into and make comfortably my own.”
The highly anticipated sequel to Gladiator, starring Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, Joseph Quinn, and Connie Nielsen alongside Russell Crowe, is slated for a November 22 theatrical release.