Nick Cave calls his script for “Gladiator II” a “masterpiece” — Time portals, Christ and the Vietnam War all play a role in it — World of Reel

It is called “The strangest sequel that was never made.” Before Ridley Scott created his script for Gladiator II, he had a completely different story in mind about the return of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the dead.

“I know how to bring him back,” Scott had said ME Films in 2017. “I’ve spoken to the studio – whether it’s going to happen, I don’t know. Gladiator was in 2000, so Russell has changed a little bit. He’s doing something now, but I’m trying to get him back here.”

Scott had commissioned musician Nick Cave to write the screenplay. Maximus would have used the “portal of a dying warrior” to rise from the dead. Cave’s script was written around 2006 and sat on DreamWorks’ shelves for almost 10 years.

Crowe was also on board to return for the sequel. In fact, he was the one who contacted Cave to write the script. The singer recently described his script, titled “Christ Killer,” in detail on a What the hell Podcast Consequence:

“(Crowe) called me and asked if I wanted to write ‘Gladiator 2,'” he said. “For someone who had only written one screenplay, it was quite a challenge. ‘Hey Russell, didn’t you die in ‘Gladiator 1′?’ ‘Yeah, you can do it.’ So he goes to purgatory and is sent down by the gods who die in heaven because there’s this one god down there on earth, this Christ figure who is becoming more and more popular, and that’s why the many gods die, so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers.”

“I was going to call it ‘Christ Killer,’ and at the end it turns out the main character was his son, so he has to kill his son and he’s been tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior, and it ends with this 20-minute war scene that follows all the wars in history, all the way back to Vietnam and all that stuff, and it was wild. It was a stone cold masterpiece. I had a lot of fun writing it because I knew on every level it was never going to get made. Let’s call it a popcorn dropper.”

That’s right, in Nick Cave’s hands, Gladiator II would have involved a Christ-like god-man who “descends into purgatory and is sent back by the gods.” According to Cave, the project came to a halt after Crowe read the script and responded with a simple “I don’t like it, mate.” If you’re more curious about Gladiator II: Christ Killer, it has been made available on Read online.

Even if the script had been greenlit this decade, Crowe would have had to undergo a major physical transformation, as he is definitely not in the shape he was in 25 years ago.