Director Ridley Scott hints at Gladiator sequel: 'I know how to bring him back'

Russell Crowe with sword in a scene from the film 'Gladiator', 2000. Photo / Getty

Ridley Scott has hinted he could be making a sequel to Gladiator, 17 years after the release of the original movie.

The 79-year-old director behind the blockbuster, which starred Russell Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius, revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he'd worked out a way to continue the story.

Scott told the magazine that he knew how to bring back Maximus, despite the fact the character died at the end of the movie.

He said: "I know how to bring him back. I was having this talk with the studio - "but he's dead." But there is a way of bringing him back."

Russell Crowe facing off against tiger in a scene from the film 'Gladiator', 2000. Photo / Getty

However, the director did admit there'd be some plot holes to iron out - like the fact 52-year-old Crowe is looking pretty different these days.

"Whether it will happen I don't know," he admitted.

"Gladiator was 2000, so Russell's changed a little bit. He's doing something right now but I'm trying to get him back down here."

Scott's idea for a sequel will undoubtedly receive a better reception from Crowe than the Gladiator 2 script once created by Aussie songwriter Nick Cave.

As Cave explained to podcaster Marc Maron, the script wasn't easy to write, considering the death of Crowe's character.

"So, he [Maximus] goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there's this one god, there's this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and all his followers," Cave said, explaining his idea for the script.

"I wanted to call it Christ Killer, and in the end you find out that the main guy was his son, so he has to kill his son and he's tricked by the gods and all of this sort of stuff. So it ends with, he becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20-minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild."

Crowe was not a fan.

"I enjoyed writing it because I knew on every level that it was never going to get made," Cave said to Maron.