Ridley Scott has revealed that the script for Gladiator 2 will be “ready to go” once he’s finished his upcoming Napoleon movie.

It was first reported back in late 2018 that the Alien director was making a sequel to his 2000 historical epic, which starred Russell Crowe, with the story to focus on Lucius, the son of Connie Nielsen’s character Lucilla and the nephew of Joaquin Phoenix’s evil Roman emperor Commodus. The producers revealed in 2019 that it would be set two decades after the original but there had been no further updates until now.

Scott divulged in an interview with Empire magazine that he will make the sequel once he’s finished his Napoleon epic Kitbag.

“I’m already having (the next) Gladiator written now,” he said. “So, when I’ve done Napoleon, Gladiator will be ready to go.”

Kitbag serves as a reunion between Scott and Phoenix, who will play the French military leader, and Scott and Jodie Comer, who recently starred in his medieval epic The Last Duel and will portray Napoleon’s wife Josephine.

“The thing that really makes Napoleon tick is, why was he in so much need of Josephine?” Scott told Empire about the Napoleon movie. “There was a need for each other. And we think we’ve pinpointed what that was.”

The Gladiator sequel was originally intended to go into production quickly after it was announced in 2018, but then Scott ended up directing two episodes of sci-fi TV show Raised by Wolves and making The Last Duel, followed by House of Gucci. Both of those films are due to be released later this year.

In the initial 2018 report, it was revealed the sequel would be written by Top Gun: Maverick’s Peter Craig, and the lead Lucius will be greatly influenced by Crowe’s character Maximus, who died at the end of the original film.

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