Thanks almost entirely to the success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, which rang up $460 million at the box office and won five Academy Awards from twelve nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor, the early 2000s saw the big budget historical epic back in vogue for the first time in decades.
Within the space of a few years we’d seen The Last Samurai, Alexander, King Arthur and The Alamo, while Scott returned to the well twice more with Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, but the only spiritual successor that managed to earn more money at the box office than Gladiator was Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy.
One of the most expensive movies in history at the time, the $185 million sword-and-sandals war drama landed a stacked cast that featured Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Rose Byrne and Peter O’Toole, although it largely relied on style over substance, which wasn’t really a bad thing when the battles were so entertaining.
That being said, the Director’s Cut is vastly superior to the theatrical edition, but that hasn’t stopped the version that hit cinemas back in 2004 from finding a new lease of life on Netflix, with Troy having crashed straight onto the most-watched list over the weekend, as per FlixPatrol.
