Although Crowe's Maximus departed this life at the end of Gladiator, along with his nemesis Commodus, discussions about a sequel began way back in 2001, shortly after the first film ended its run. While various pitches were thrown around (including one idea in which Maximus comes back from the Roman conception of the afterlife), development of a follow-up stalled until around 2017. That's when Paramount Pictures, which had obtained the rights, decided it was time to return to the arena.

According to Ridley Scott, work on the sequel's script began four years ago, and part of the premise for the sequel revolved around Caracalla and Geta. "After [Commodus'] death, there was a scramble for the chair, and out of that eventually came a man who became the father of the two princes," Scott explains. "He, as emperors go, was semi-decent­ -- sometimes weak, sometimes lax, but not terrible. But when he died of, I think, natural causes at 70, which was old for the Roman Empire, the two brothers took over. One of them was just this side of being dysfunctional, a lunatic. The other one tried to control his brother. So that state of constant disagreement and fluctuating personalities was where we began."

The two brothers are played by Fred Hechinger (Kraven the Hunter) and Joseph Quinn (The Fantastic Four: First Steps), respectively, with Hechinger telling us that finding information on the real Caracalla was relatively easy. "There's a treasure trove of historical material," Hechinger says. "But I must say, Ridley is an empire to himself, and his energy and excitement about the spectacle and intensity of the story means, in my experience, that his influences hold no bounds. So our influences are as wide-ranging as Romulus and Remus to Beavis and Butt-Head. There is a vast expanse of things that we picked from, some of which are true to the time, and others which are completely anachronistic, crazy, and freewheeling."

Hechinger hints that Caracalla and Geta are essentially two sides of the same (Roman) coin, siblings for whom a love-hate relationship can mean death or enslavement for dozens or thousands on a whim. "There's a codependency to the two of them," he says. "There's also a raging competition. There's this two-mindedness where they really have, by the design of their immense power, and also by the way that they speak to one another and engage with each other, created a very private world... There's a comedy and a tragedy to how these two interact and, I also think, a real desperation."

With the movie's antagonists shaping up early on, Scott and screenwriters Peter Craig and David Scarpa next needed a hero. They found one in Lucius (Paul Mescal), the now-grown son of Commodus' sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, encoring from the first film). Sent to live in Africa by his mother after the events of Gladiator, Lucius is captured by Roman invaders and brought back to Rome as a slave who is trained to fight in the arena by the scheming, power-hungry Macrinus (Denzel Washington).

"She has lost Lucius," says Nielsen about returning to her character 20 years later. "She's had to make a heartbreaking decision in order to save his life, and she has had to find a way to live with just hope that maybe one day she might find him again. She has also lived as a prisoner and has been used as a political pawn by subsequent rulers of the Roman Empire, who trot her out as the remaining member of her very famous dynasty. So she understands that she is alive because she has status, and that status is further heightened by the person that she is also married to."

That person is General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who leads the campaign that ends up capturing Lucius, and who eventually faces the younger man on the floor of the Colosseum itself. While both Lucilla and Lucius are based on real people, Marcus Acacius is a fictional creation, as is his confrontation with Lucius in the gladiatorial arena.