Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II Climbs Netflix Streaming Charts After October Release

Ridley Scott takes his time with sequels. His post-apocalyptic thriller The Dog Stars comes to streaming this month. Before it, he waited 33 years to return to the Alien franchise with 2012’s Prometheus, for better or worse. He followed up much faster with 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Earlier still, he directed a sequel to another filmmaker’s work, the Silence of the Lambs follow-up Hannibal, released in 2001.

In 2024, Scott finally gave audiences Gladiator II. The film follows his historical action epic, which starred Russell Crowe as the Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius and Joaquin Phoenix as the detestable emperor Commodus.

After a solid theatrical run and a stint on Paramount Plus, Gladiator II is now on Netflix. It is dominating the movie streaming charts in the U.S. Netflix added the film on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and within a couple of days it had taken over. On its debut weekend, Gladiator II knocked Ben Affleck’s divisive thriller Animals out of the No. 1 spot on the world’s biggest streaming platform.

Is Gladiator II any good?

The original Gladiator has only grown in reverence over the past 26 years. It is an eminently watchable revenge story, helped by strong performances from Crowe and Phoenix and a cast that includes Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, and Richard Harris. Critics and audiences embraced it at the time. The film grossed more than $460 million at the global box office, which made it the year’s second-highest-grossing film behind John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2. At the 2001 ceremony, Gladiator won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor for Crowe, Best Sound, and Best Costume Design.

That set the bar for Gladiator II pretty high. The sequel beats its predecessor in certain ways, but it doesn’t reach the consistent highs of Scott’s original. Critic Matt Patches wrote in his review of Gladiator II that the sequel “is actually a far better action movie than Gladiator, with leaner fights and wider-angled staging.” He added in a parenthetical that the 2000 film, for all its Oscar glory, is a shaky-cam mess. On the acting side, Patches found the sequel uneven: “But as a showcase of throwback epic Hollywood acting, it’s all over the place. For all the genuine star power Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, and Connie Nielsen bring to the screen, Scott doesn’t bring them all together in a single coherent tale.”

Audiences still showed up. Gladiator II earned $462 million worldwide, which made it the 12th-highest-grossing film of 2024.

What is Gladiator II about?

The film’s official synopsis reads: “Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.”

Pedro Pascal plays General Acacius, Joseph Quinn plays Emperor Geta, Fred Hechinger plays Emperor Caracalla, and Denzel Washington plays Macrinus. Connie Nielsen returns as Lucilla from the original Gladiator. Scott directed from a screenplay by David Scarpa, with a story by Peter Craig and Scarpa.

Will there be a Gladiator III?

According to Scott, yes. In a Q&A with The Guardian last year, the 88-year-old director was asked about a possible Gladiator 3. He answered, somewhat vaguely, “Gladiator is in process right now.” There has been little word on the supposed project since.

Scott has just delivered The Dog Stars, which Polygon’s review called “a post-apocalyptic odyssey like no other.” The film is based on Peter Heller’s 2012 book of the same name, adapted by screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant). Jacob Elordi stars as Hig, one of the few remaining survivors on Earth, years after a deadly virus swept the planet. Hig lives on an old airfield with a former marine named Bangley (Josh Brolin).

Entertainment editor Jake Kleinman wrote in his review: “All things considered, they have a pretty good life — plenty of whiskey, cigarettes, bullets, and the safety of a secure perimeter — but Hig wants something more. He’s obsessed with a faint radio message seemingly broadcast from a town called Grand Junction that he can only hear while flying up in the mountains. But Grand Junction is too far away to fly there and back on a single tank of gas, so he never makes the trip. Then, because this is a movie and things have to happen, eventually he does, setting off on an odyssey across the Rocky Mountain West and encountering new friends and allies along the way.”

Scott’s next project is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Related: Gladiator 2’s original script made Russell Crowe a time-traveling zombie warrior. Rocker Nick Cave wrote it at Crowe’s request, and the response was “Don’t like it, mate.”

Source: Polygon