‘Gladiator 3’ already in works, says director

LOS ANGELES — Ridley Scott’s long-awaited “Gladiator” sequel has not even hit US theaters yet, but the veteran director is already hard at work on a third installment.

“Gladiator II,” which arrives in North American cinemas Friday, stars Irish actor Paul Mescal (“Normal People”) as Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the multiple Oscar-winning original.

A bloody, blockbuster epic of revenge, treachery and — yes — gladiators, it has drawn positive reviews and already hauled in a muscular $87M 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.”

The plot of “Gladiator II” was also “planned to leave it wide open to a sequel,” added Scott, a famously prolific filmmaker who is still directing roughly a film per year at the age of 86. The second film opens with Lucius — sent into exile by his mother to avoid certain death in Rome — battling in vain to defend his adopted North African home city from the arrival of seemingly unstoppable Roman soldiers.

Captured as a prisoner of war, he is brought back to the imperial metropolis, where he must prove his worth in the Colosseum in order to exact revenge on invading general Marcus Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal.

Danish actress Connie Nielsen reprises her role as Lucilla from the 2000 original, while Denzel Washington is already earning Oscar buzz for his conniving, mercurial and highly flamboyant ringmaster, Macrinus.

“Jewelry, sandals and everything — I just looked like a Roman pimp... I couldn’t put on enough rings,” joked Washington on Monday.

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.”

“The last time I spoke to (Scott) he said he had nine pages. Yesterday, he said he had 14,” Mescal told journalists. “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,” added 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.

“We don’t learn historically anything. We keep repeating the same mistakes. We’re going through exactly the same thing right now in several parts of the planet,” he added.