“It was completely rotten”: Gladiator almost lost a star because of the script!

When, more than 20 years after its release, we find a feature film as precise and flawless as Gladiator, now considered one of Ridley Scott’s greatest films, it’s hard to imagine that shooting the famous butterfly worn by Russell Crowe could be chaotic. .

However, as Maximus’ translator recently revealed on the microphone Vanity FairHe expressed serious doubts about the quality of the script, even when production was underway in the late 90s:

“With Gladiator, what didn’t convince me was the world that was around me. At the heart of this project was a brilliant concept, but the script was rotten, completely rotten. There were all kinds of weird sequences.”

“The moon It was about chariots and how famous gladiators used certain types of chariots, how some had advertising deals with olive oil producers and things like that.Russell Crowe continues. “And it was all true, but it wasn’t going to resonate with a modern audience. (…) The energy around what we were doing was very fractured.”

So much so that the actor even seriously considered leaving the project, as he also confided in the microphone Vanity Fair :

I thought a couple of times that maybe my best option was to get on a plane and get out of here.

Russell Crowe says it was his discussions with Ridley Scott that finally restored his faith in Gladiator. Indeed, the director assured him that unless Crowe had 100% confidence in the scene, he would not film it. The script was reworked during filming and significantly:

“When we started the film, we agreed on 21 pages of the script”– says the actor. “Generally, a script has to be 103 to 110 pages, something like that. So we were away and used those pages in the first part of the film. And when we got to our second set, which was Morocco, we were stuck.

Gladiator, released in theaters in 2000, won 5 Oscars, including Best Actor for Russell Crowe.

(Re)discover all the hidden details of the movie…