Harry Gregson-Williams | Through the Shattered Lens

I don’t know how or why we have a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Academy Award Winner Gladiator, but here it is in all its glory. It looks quite interesting, I have to say. In my opinion, Ridley’s films are a coin flip. This can go either way. And who knows? Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get a Kingdom of Heaven follow up. One can only hope.

Gladiator II looks like it’s expanding on the first film, at least in terms of the fighting arena. We have naval battles in the Colesseum now. Despite the fall of Commodus in the first film (Joaquin Phoenix), Rome still has issues. A young gladiator (Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers) seems to have an issue with General Marcus Acacius, played by Wonder Woman 84 and The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal. Ridley’s also reunited with American Gangster‘s Denzel Washington, as well as Gladiator‘s Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi. Also on hand are Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One), Rory McCann (Jumanji: The Next Level), May Calamawy (Marvel’s Moon Knight) and Peter Mensah (300).

Harry Gregson-Williams (Man on Fire, Kingdom of Heaven) will be scoring the film, taking over for Hans Zimmer.

Gladiator II will be in theatres this November.

Ridley Scott, master filmmaker with a talent for visual storytelling, has had an uneven string of films the last decade or so. His last couple of films have either been underwhelming or divisive. One thing that hasn’t failed him has been the look of his films which continue to be great.

His last film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, wasn’t what one would call a great film. One could even say it wasn’t even a decent one. Hopefully, his latest will break his prolonged streak of misses and get him back on the hit column. This film is the adaptation of the Andy Weir best-selling novel, The Martian.

Ridley Scott has Drew Goddard’s screenplay adaptation to work with not to mention a star-studded cast led by Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain (the inclusion of the latter already makes this a must-see for one of the site’s writers). From the first released trailer we seem to be getting a film that brings back memories of Apollo 13 and Cast Away.

The Martian is set for a November 25, 2015 release date.