‘Gladiator’ sequel gets 2024 release date, Paul Mescal likely to play the lead

Gladiator sequel has finally set a release date. The Paramount Pictures announced on Friday that the yet-untitled film will hit the theatres on November 22, 2024.

The Aftersun Oscar nominee Paul Mescal is reportedly in negotiations to star in the lead role in director Ridley Scott’s follow-up to 2000 release Gladiator.

The yet-to-be-titled sequel will be produced by Scott, Michael Pruss, and Doug Wick of Red Wagon Entertainment.

As per the early reports, the Normal People famed actor will not be replacing Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius from the first film, who died.

Mescal will play Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), who now is a grown man as the story takes place years after the first film ended.

Lucius also was the nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the son of Roman leader Marcus Aurelius, who murdered his father seized the throne.

Scott, who directed the 2000 movie and is expected to take the director’s chair for the sequel as he has been envisioning the follow up for years now.

“I’m already having [the next] ‘Gladiator’ written now,” Scott told Empire magazine in 2021. “So when I’ve done ‘Napoleon’, ‘Gladiator’ will be ready to go.”