Paul Mescal gets bloody in exclusive Gladiator 2 image, as Ridley Scott explains why going back to Rome in the sequel was a dealbreaker

Total Film exclusive image: Paul Mescal in Gladiator 2 — (Image credit: Aidan Monaghan, PARAMOUNT)

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 sees the action return to the Colosseum as Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal) takes his place in the brutal arena. However, the director explains to Total Film that returning to the location was a dealbreaker when deciding whether to bring back his Oscar-winning epic.

"You go through all the questions," Scott tells Total Film in our new issue out on Thursday, September 12, which features The Penguin on the cover. "Can I go back to Rome? Can I go into the Colosseum again? Because we did that with Russell [Crowe]. And the answer is: you better be in the Colosseum because it’s called Gladiator. I don’t know how you do it without going back into the Colosseum, otherwise there’s no point in doing it."

The sequel doesn’t begin in Rome as it picks up two decades after the events of Gladiator (2000) with Lucius, who is living in Numidia, on the North African coast, far removed from his lineage. After a Roman invasion, he’s enslaved and, like Maximus before him, fights as a gladiator on Rome’s cruelest stage.

That’s not the only way in which Gladiator 2 is repeating history as Scott wants to remind audiences that this isn’t storybook stuff – it actually happened, and its impact has echoed through the ages. "People think that history is something that didn’t happen," he says. "By God, this happened again and again… I tried to bring back a little bit of that history into a reality, and not a fantasy."

Gladiator 2 opens in cinemas in the UK on November 15. Check out our full exclusive image of Mescal as Lucius above.

You can read more about Gladiator 2 and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, September 12.

Check out the covers below:

The Penguin covers of Total Film magazine — (Image credit: Sky/HBO/Total Film)

Subscribers have the exclusive text-free cover on the way to them right now, with the issue then hitting shops and digital newsstands on Thursday 12 September.

Total Film subscriber offer — (Image credit: Sky/HBO/Warner Bros/Disney/20th Century Studios/Prime Video)

I’m the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for the Total Film and SFX sections online. I previously worked as a Senior Showbiz Reporter and SEO TV reporter at Express Online for three years. I've also written for The Resident magazines and Amateur Photographer, before specializing in entertainment.