GOSSIP & RUMORS: ‘Gladiator’ was a disaster — became Hollywood classic anyway

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The tale of making “Gladiator” is every bit as epic as the movie itself.

Twenty-four years after the film’s release, director Ridley Scott has brought a hotly-anticipated sequel starring Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn along with Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi reprising their roles from the first film. 

The 2000 movie reinvigorated the swords-and-sandals genre, inspiring other historical action dramas like “Troy.”

It became the second highest grossing movie of the year – raking in $465.4 million, not adjusted for inflation – and was the most-nominated film at the 2001 Academy Awards with 12 nods, and 5 wins, including Best Actor for Russell Crowe and Best Picture. Oscar glory was certainly not a feat it was expected to ever attain upon its release in May 2000. 

The historic success of “Gladiator” is all the more dramatic because it was, well, a disaster to make. 

So before jumping off your chariot to see “Gladiator II,” here’s a look back at how “Gladiator” defied the odds to become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome. 

The script was absolute rubbish

“At the core of what we were doing was a great concept, but the script, it was rubbish. Absolute rubbish,” Russell Crowe told Vanity Fair in 2023. “I did think, a couple times, maybe my best option is just to get on a plane and get out of here, you know?”

Even more troubling was the fact that the rubbish script was less than a quarter finished. 

“When we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of the script that we agreed on,” he said. “A script is usually between 103 or 104, 110 pages, something like that, so we had a long way to go, and we basically used up those pages in the first section of the movie. So, by the time we got to our second location, which was Morocco, we were sort of catching up.”

Scott ended up having to give crew members extra days off because they didn’t know what they would be filming the next day. 

“It’s the dumbest possible way to make a film,” Crowe told the BBC in 2016. 

Connie Nielsen, who played Lucilla, had her own concerns about the script after being cast. 

“Ridley called me and asked me what I had thought about the latest draft,” she laughs, “and I said, ‘Well, this is where I’m seeing an issue because blah, blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘That kind of word just didn’t even exist at the time, it’s weird that I would be using it. It’s culturally and historically wrong. It just won’t work,’” she recalled telling the director.

“And he said, ‘OK, stop. Write everything down and send it to me.’ So, I wrote 20 pages because I was a young and very hungry artist, and I wanted to put my mark on this incredible story.”

Script problems persisted on set, with pages being written on the fly.

“‘Russell was getting his lines at such a late date that he had built up a real irritation factor,’” Scott once recalled, according to Nicole LaPorte, who documented much of the on-set drama in her book “The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks.”

“So at that moment, when you get that irritated, anything that comes through the door, he’s going to get pissed off with,” Scott added.

Per LaPorte, designated on-set screenwriter Bill Nicholson would say things in the vein of, “I’m not gonna say this sh-t. It’s sh-t. It’s stupid sh-t. Why should I say this? Why can’t we have it the way it was this morning?”

Crowe was so unhappy with the script, he walked off set at least twice, LaPorte wrote.

Russell Crowe refused to say the movie’s most famous line

One of the movie’s most famous lines – if not its most famous line – was nearly torpedoed by Crowe. 

When Crowe’s character, Maximus, reveals his identity to Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), he delivers an absolute banger: 

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”

But as LaPorte notes, “Never were Crowe’s spirits more in flux” than when it came time to film this scene.

“Crowe was convinced that [the speech] was ridiculous—overwrought puffery that no man would ever be caught dead saying, least of all a brawny, sword-carrying killer,” she wrote. 

Scott, however, didn’t bluster and blow back, but “waited until the tantrum subsided” and “agreed to shoot the scene the way Crowe preferred.” 

It would seem Scott knew how the situation would play out. 

“After doing the take, Crowe still looked dissatisfied,” according to LaPorte. “‘Let me see the other script again,’” he said to Scott, referring to the loathed revision. After studying the page stonily, he shrugged. “‘Well, we might as well try it.’”

They then shot the scene as scripted – leaving everyone on set in awe. But Crowe still wasn’t happy. “It was sh-t,” he told Scott, before adding, “but I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even sh-t sound good.” 

Actor Oliver Reed died in the middle of filming

Line deliveries and an unfinished screenplay turned out to be the least of the production’s script problems, as the entire ending had to be reworked after an actor playing a pivotal character died in the middle of production, necessitating a new ending.

Actor Oliver Reed, who played Proximo – the gladiator-turned-slave owner – passed away after a double heart attack during a break from filming in Malta. 

A legendary hellraiser, he died in a pub during a break in shooting after drinking eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey, a few shots of cognac and after beating five Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling,” according to LaPorte. 

Reed had not finished filming all of his scenes for the film, but Scott didn’t want to re-cast the the role and re-shoot Reed’s scenes. Instead, he brought in a body double and used CGI to create a digital mask of Reed’s face that was mapped on to the body double for a few crucial moments – seemingly one of the first times the technology was utilized in such a way – and his character was killed earlier in the film than was originally planned. 

That meant the movie needed a new ending, so one of the film’s screenwriters, William Nicholson – who had just returned home to England, thinking his work with on-set, on-the-fly rewrites was done – had to go back to ancient Rome. 

“Oliver Reed died two hours ago,” Walter F. Parkes told Nicholson over the phone. “Get on a plane and go back to Malta and create a new ending.”

Russell Crowe’s character was supposed to live

Aside from changes made to the script necessitated by Reed’s death, one other big change was made to the film’s ending: Crowe’s character died in the end. 

Shockingly, Crowe’s titular ‘Gladiator’ was supposed to live – surviving his final battle with Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in the Roman Colosseum. But as filming went on, it dawned on Scott that the gladiator had to die.

“I remember Ridley coming up to me on set saying, ‘Look, the way this is shaping up, I don’t see how you live. This character is about one act of pure vengeance for his wife and child, and, once he’s accomplished that, what does he do?’” Crowe recalled Scott telling him.

“And my joke used to be, ‘Yeah, what does Maximus do? Does he end up running a f–king pizzeria by the Colosseum?’ He has a singular purpose, which is to meet his wife in the afterlife and apologize for not being there for her. And that’s it.”

Ridley Scott burned a forest to film the opening scene

The opening sequence in “Gladiator” centered on a dramatic fight between Maximus’ Roman legions and the barbarous Gauls. Fire played a major role in making an impact on the audience.

As recalled in the book “Gladiator: The Making of the Ridley Scott Epic,” the Roman artillery “launches earthen pots full of oil from huge catapults. While the pots are airborne, giant mechanized crossbows called ‘scorpions’ fire flaming bolts that pierce the pots, raining fire onto the terrified enemy — and of course setting the woods on fire.”

And the woods were actually set on fire. Which thankfully wasn’t a problem. The area, filmed in the Bourne Woods in Surrey, England, was slated for deforestation by the Royal Forestry Commission. Scott managed to find out about this and decided to carpe diem, offering to burn the forest down free of charge — provided he would be allowed to film it.

“I said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll burn it to the ground,”’ Scott recalled. “They said, ‘Good.’”

A tiger almost mauled Russell Crowe

In one of the film’s more dramatic scenes, tigers are unleashed to vanquish the enslaved gladiators. In filming the scene, Scott decided to use – in part at least – actual tigers. 

Five tigers were brought in for one dramatic scene where Maximus fights Tigris the Gaul. A veterinarian armed with tranquilizer darts was on hand and Crowe was supposed to be kept at least 15 feet away from the big cats, who were leashed on chains. But despite all the precautions, one tiger got a little too up close and personal with Crowe. Within two feet, in fact.

“[The tiger was] a big boy from tail to nose, eleven feet. You’ve got two guys on a chain with a ring in the floor to control it,” Scott told Variety in 2020. “Russell said, ‘OK, release them,’ and when Russell would fall back, the tiger would come out of the hole and Russell would roll out of the way and he said, ‘F–k me, that was close.’ And I said, ‘We were there as well, Russell. Hey, you were two feet, I was like four feet.’”

“’It’s so beautiful, it’s so regal, and you’d love to be able to just pet them and cuddle them, but obviously that comes with inherent risk,’” Crowe added.

The heart-stopping shot made in the film. 

Injuries plagued Russell Crowe

To say Crowe threw himself into the role of Maximus is a dramatic understatement. The actor racked up a series of serious injuries during filming. 

The star lost all feeling in his right forefinger for two years after injuring it in a sword fight; he worsened an existing Achilles tendon injury, broke a bone in his foot, cracked a hip bone, and popped more than one bicep tendon out of its sockets. 

He often didn’t need makeup artists to come in and bloody him up – he had plenty of his own blood showing to achieve the desired cienematic effect. In the movie’s opening battle scene, the wounds on Crowe’s face were very real, caused by his horse backing him into tree branches after getting startled. 

“When you see the film and there’s the take up on the screen, the other 19 where the horse ran you over or the guy smacked you in the head or whatever are not in the movie,” he told Vulture in 2016.

But Crowe has no regrets.

“[T]hat’s the way I did it. I remember back in the early ’90s I was talking to some older American guys, and this one guy said, ‘Look, you see that guy over there who’s dressed exactly the same as you? He’s here so you don’t have to roll in the dirt for six or seven hours a day,’” Crowe said in an interview with British GQ in June.

“And I’m like, ‘But I’m playing the character, so I’m gonna be the one rolling in the dirt.’ As you get older, you realize they were just trying to point out that maybe it’s better to keep your own tendons. Life’s easier with tendons.”

“Gladiator II” is in theaters now.