Gladiator 2 was without the biggest star from Gladiator, Russell Crowe, but scribe Peter Craig says this wasn’t always the case. Maximus (Crowe) dies at the end of Gladiator, so it wasn’t a shock to learn that he wasn’t involved with its sequel, and he was instead replaced in the lead role by Paul Mescal, who portrays Maximus’ son, Lucius. Although Crowe is absent from the film, the message he delivers as Maximus in the first Gladiator is very much present, so much so that many fans felt that both Lucius and the film as a whole were too similar to the original. While speaking to TheDirect, Gladiator 2 writer Peter Craig revealed that he did write a Maximus flashback scene, and he spoke about why it wasn’t included:

“There was a draft I had where I—So there was an idea that the Romans had that you could talk to your ancestors, and they have these underground catacombs where people’s urns and ashes and bones were all buried beneath the city. There had been a scene where once Lucius finds out that it’s his father, he goes down there and he finds his grave. And there was just going to be a really brief flashback with Russell. I think they probably made the right decision not using it. But I was on that with Ridley [Scott] for a while. I actually left to do this show. And they, I sort of gave them a big menu of stuff, and they selected some things from it, and I think they left a lot of the right stuff off of it.”

While Gladiator 2 did manage to pass the first Gladiator by the end of its theatrical run, the film was far from a profit, considering its hefty production and marketing budgets. Paramount Pictures reportedly spent around $250 million just on the making of Gladiator 2, with $100 million more going towards marketing costs, meaning the film needed to make well over $500 million at the box office to break even, and it finished its theatrical run with $172 million domestically and $288 million internationally for a global total of $460 million. A scene or two with Russell Crowe’s Maximus may have given the film a small boost at the box office, especially for those with a deep nostalgia connection to the original, but it’s unlikely that it would have given it the bump it needed to cross into profit territory.

‘Gladiator 2’ Assembled a Strong Cast Despite Crowe’s Absence

Gladiator 2 may not have returned Russell Crowe to the role of Maximus, but it did assemble a stellar ensemble to help tell the next chapter of Maximus’ story. In addition to Mescal, Oscar-winner Denzel Washington also joined the cast of Gladiator 2 as Macrinus, the one who takes in Lucius before later turning on him at the end of the film. The Fantastic Four: First Steps and The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal also featured in Gladiator 2, along with Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn as the Emperors of Rome. Connie Nielsen even reprised her role as Lucilla in Gladiator 2.

Despite being written into an early draft of the script, Crowe did not appear in Gladiator 2. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates on the film and watch Gladiator 2 on Paramount+.

via Collider