Paul Mescal says Ridley Scott is making Gladiator 3 more 'political' like The Godfather: 'It won't go back to the arena'

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Ridley Scott's long-awaited Gladiator sequel has just hit the US theatres, but the veteran director is already hard at work on a third instalment. Scott confirmed ahead of Gladiator II's release that a third part was very much happening. He has now re-confirmed it, saying the threequel is in the works.

There will certainly be a Gladiator III

Gladiator II stars Irish actor Paul Mescal as Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe's Maximus from the multiple Oscar-winning original. The film has drawn positive reviews and has already hauled in a muscular $87 million at the global box office since opening in several countries last week.

“Given the performance in the rest of the world that we've seen yesterday, there's certainly going to be a Gladiator III,” said Scott, in Los Angeles on Monday for the movie's glitzy US premiere.

“Because it also becomes financial, and you'd be insane not to consider a third version,” said the British director of seminal films such as Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise.

Scott, a famously prolific filmmaker who is still directing roughly a film per year at the age of 86, added that the plot of Gladiator II was also “planned to leave it wide open to a sequel.”

It will be more political

Mescal -- whose character battles bloodthirsty baboons, rhinos and sharks in addition to humans in Gladiator II -- also expressed excitement about returning for another film.

But he said Scott had discussed a new direction for the plot that would not simply “go back to the arena as we know it.”

“I would be excited for it to go into a more political sphere,” with Lucius thrust into a world of court intrigue that he does not want to inhabit, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, said Mescal.

Asked how the second film's themes tackled power and politics differently, some 24 years after the original Scott said: “They're exactly the same.”

“A super-rich man thinks he can take over the Empire. Is that familiar?” he said, just days after billionaire Donald Trump's re-election as US president.

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