Russell Crowe Calls Gladiator II a "Failure"

Speaking at the Taormina Film Festival via Variety, Russell Crowe described Gladiator II as a failure, saying the sequel barely matched the original box office despite grossing $172.4 million domestically and $462.2 million worldwide. He argued that when accounting for changes in the value of a dollar, the film fell short because it misunderstood what made the first movie resonate.

Crowe singled out the sequel’s decision to reveal that Lucius was a secret child of Maximus and Lucilla, and recalled resisting pressure to include a sex scene in the original. "When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters.

I kept pushing back... There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey. Luckily for me, Ridley... agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film," he said.

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