8) Gladiator 2: Christ Killer
Gladiator provided a major comeback for Ridley Scott, it made a huge star out of Russell Crowe, drew five Oscars – including Best Picture and Best Actor – and made $457 million at the box office for Universal Pictures. So, it makes total sense that all parties involved would at least look at ways of making a possible sequel.
The key issue, clearly, was that Gladiator‘s protagonist died at the end of the original film; though for Nick Cave, the Bad Seeds frontman and sometime screenwriter hired by Crowe to pen Gladiator 2, this proved no problem at all. His idea? Resurrect Crowe’s Maximus, make him immortal, and have him fight in major wars throughout history, bringing him through WWII and Vietnam, right up to the present day.
Cave wanted the film to be called Christ Killer, as the jumping-off point involved Maximus being sent back to Earth by Roman gods to slay Jesus. For some reason, this film never happened – according to Scott, Crowe liked the script, but apparently the studio thought it was too far-fetched. Which it was, but what they didn’t take into account is how incredibly, ridiculously insane this film could have been: a sword-and-sandals revenge saga turned into a science fiction epic.
