Russell Crowe has said that the Gladiator sequel was a failure because it lacked a “moral core” and that studio behind it “didn’t understand why [the original movie] was successful”.

Crowe was speaking at the Taormina film festival, and in remarks reported by Variety he outlined why the thought the first Gladiator, released to considerable acclaim and box office success in 2000, was a success, and where its sequel, released in 2024, struggled.

Crowe said that his refusal to shoot a sex scene with Connie Nielsen, who played his former lover Lucilla, gave the first Gladiator its “emotional core”. “When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I kept pushing back. This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey.”

Crowe added that Ridley Scott, who directed both films, gave way. “Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he’d love a sex scene between me and Connie Nielsen, agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film.”

Gladiator II, in Crowe’s view, failed to heed the lessons of the first film’s success, saying that women appreciated the original Gladiator and were a key element of its audience. “[The studio] failed because they didn’t understand why [the original movie] was successful – it had a moral core.

“That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realise: from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theatres than men. You think that on the surface Gladiator is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge, but it’s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance.”