Director Sir Ridley Scott and the team behind Gladiator (2000) have spoken about making a sequel at one point or another. But lead actor Russell Crowe is quite skeptical of the possibility of 'Gladiator 2' happening, in which Crowe states: "If they're having conversations about that, those conversations haven't included me. I'm not sure what they have in mind. At all... Can I just say, with a pinch of salt, they have genuinely been having the same conversations since the year 2000." When he later learned that the movie would proceed with Paul Mescal in the lead, he congratulated the actor while also admitting that he was slightly jealous.
Once Paul Mescal was locked for the project, Scott and Paramount Pictures President & CEO Brian Robbins and Co-Presidents Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland pushed hard for a star for the other major role in the film and took a shot with Denzel Washington, the two-time Oscar winner. When the offer was first presented there it was unknown whether he would actually do it; Washington is known for his great taste in projects and doesn't sign up for just anything. But after having previously worked with Ridley Scott on American Gangster (2007) and reading the script, sources close to the project said he was excited about the bad-ass role Scott had conceived with him in mind. A meeting with Scott soon followed, and after the director gave his pitch, Washington was all but on board.
In the years following the release of the first film there were numerous attempts to write a sequel. Musician Nick Cave was invited to draft a version by Russell Crowe and Sir Ridley Scott. His version focused on the more mythical elements of Ancient Rome and would have seen Maximus arrive in the afterlife, only to be faced with other souls who are yet to ascend further. He is eventually tasked by Jupiter and other Roman deities to return to earth to find and kill Hephaestus, a former deity who has betrayed them. From there, he is resurrected as a Christian and finds himself journeying back to Rome, on a mission to stop Christianity from spreading, while crossing paths with the new Emperor, Lucius. The movie would have ended with Maximus being cursed to live for an eternity, featuring a montage of the soldier battling through the Crusades, World War II, and the Vietnam War, eventually revealing a modern-day Maximus working at the Pentagon in Washington. The studio decided not to go through with this version, but the script is available to read online.
During the first week of filming, a planned stunt has left six crew members with non-threatening burn injuries on the Morocco shoot of Paramount's Gladiator 2. No details of how the reported fire stunt went sideways were provided. Four of the six remain in the hospital. The incident occurred on June 7, 2023.
It was reported that Timothée Chalamet, Miles Teller, Austin Butler, Richard Madden and Paul Mescal met or auditioned for director Sir Ridley Scott with Mescal being one of the firsts and leaving a lasting impression on Scott. Mescal was eventually cast in the lead role.