The Gladiator II trailer is here – and proves Paul Mescal has box office muscle

In the summer of 2023, we Barbenheimered. This coming November, who’s ready to be Gladicked? Since it proved so lucrative last time, two of the biggest films of 2024, Gladiator II and Wicked, are being released on the same date, November 15 – though in the UK, we’re getting Ridley Scott’s Roman spectacular one week early, so in the ensuing box office duel it will have a slight head start.

Many of us assumed that Gladiator II would be the Oppenheimer of the pair: epic, stern and magisterial, and likelier to win round Oscar and Bafta voters in the new year. But in the hotly anticipated first trailer, the Kenergy is frankly off the charts. Think sun, sand, rowing boats, dinky tunics, and more glistening abs than have seen the inside of a cinema since Ryan Gosling’s dance-off.

Hints of plot are dangled. We’re introduced firstly to Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla, who as a child unwittingly watched his father fight in the arena during the original 2000 film. Sent out of the city for his own protection, this one-time heir to Rome grows into Paul Mescal, and becomes mixed up with Denzel Washington’s Macrinus – a plotter and powerbroker who keeps a stable of gladiators, and sees Lucius as the key to toppling the empire itself. “Rome must fall,” he purrs. “I need only give it a push.”

Higher up the sales agenda than political and familial intrigue, though, is the spectacle – and the trailer delivers oodles of that. The already touted Mescal-versus-rhinoceros fight is previewed, but it’s outshone by a (historically accurate, amazingly) depiction of the colosseum being flooded for a staged naval battle, with gladiators rowing galleys while what look like sharks and/or crocodiles circle the vessels. 

This bread-and-circuses pageantry is clever contrasted with a real-world military engagement, as galleons carrying soldiers pound at a North African coastal city’s fortified walls. This invading force is led by Pedro Pascal’s general Marcus Acacius, who takes his orders from Geta and Caracalla, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger’s fey-slash-savage brother-emperors, adding a top note of psycho-camp to the thunderous proceedings.

From the opening shot of Mescal eyeing Crowe’s iconic sword as it hangs on a torchlit catacomb wall to the closing promise of decapitation, the whole thing blares Major Work Inbound. And for a number of parties, Gladiator II’s commercial and critical fate is as onerous as whether Rome stands or falls. At 86, Ridley Scott is busier than ever, but despite a recent run of strong work including Alien Covenant, The Last Duel and Napoleon, the director is long overdue a hit on the scale of 2015’s The Martian: this could be it.

Meanwhile, the 28-year-old Mescal has yet to be tested as a mainstream box office draw, despite emerging in recent years as one of Gen-Z’s favourite heartthrobs. Aftersun, All of Us Strangers and (on television) Normal People have built the Irish actor an ardent fanbase who are doubtless already going feral on social media over screen grabs from the trailer. But can they be coaxed out to the cinema en masse, and will they bring their friends? 

David Ellison will certainly be hoping so. The new owner of Paramount Pictures, and CEO of the heavy-hitting production company Skydance, will be keen to prove his new acquisition can produce major works that hit that Barbenheimer three-way sweet spot: critical acclaim, commercial domination, and meme-able cultural cachet.

They managed in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick – a Skydance production, notably – and today’s trailer, I think, bodes well for more of that. As Hollywood continues to scramble to find a path forward from the franchise era, nothing less will be Kenough.