Ridley Scott says he's ready to make 'Gladiator III': 'Yes, it's true'

While it took 24 years for prolific director Ridley Scott to return with a sequel to the Oscar-winning Roman epic "Gladiator," fans might not have to wait so long for "Gladiator III."

Is he planning another installment? "Yes, it's true," says Scott.

And you can thank fellow film legend and "Megalopolis" director Francis Ford Coppola for that.

"I sat and pondered all this over a weekend, and I realized, well, I'm stealing this whole notion from Francis," says Scott, hours before attending a Hollywood premiere for "Gladiator II" (in theaters Friday).

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Here's what Scott means. "Gladiator II" is anchored to the story of Lucius (Paul Mescal), who 16 years earlier witnessed the death of his father Maximus (Russell Crowe) in a roaring Colosseum at the hands of his uncle Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).

In the sequel, Lucius is forced to own up to his royal lineage and eventually finds himself battling for his life in the famous Roman killing arena, just like his father.

For Scott, that all has overtones of Coppola's "The Godfather" trilogy, whose third and final installment found another son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), taking over where his mob boss father left off.

"At the end of 'The Godfather' (saga), you see that Michael doesn't want the job at all," says Scott. "I just love that idea of a guy who's inherited a role that he just cannot get out of. That really intrigues me."

You can make your own assumptions about where the character of Lucius might go in "Gladiator III." Consider him a reluctant leader of a crumbling empire.

But there is another powerful reason why Scott, 86, may well return to those epic sets on Malta for another installment of the movie that won him Oscar gold in 2001 (best picture and best actor for Crowe, as well as best costumes, sound, and visual effects): speed.

"We did 'Gladiator II' in 51 days, compared to 100 the first time around," he says with evident pride. How? "We had 11 cameras going. But don't try that if you don't know how to do it, it'll be a mess."

Connie Nielsen, the Danish actress who returns as Lucilla (Lucius' mother) in this second installment, says that much like with the first "Gladiator," actors again had Scott to thank for making things brutally real even when computer graphics could have done the job.

When Nielsen starred in "Mission to Mars" (also made in 2000), "I was hanging on wires in a giant hangar sobbing that my husband has just died, but there's literally nothing around me," she says. "That's not what you get with Ridley. Then, as now, everything you see was built.

"Everything is acted out in front of you. I'm in the royal box at the Colosseum, actually watching these battles going on in front of me. The ships might have been on wheels (instead of in water, which was added later), but they were driving around and these men are doing battle right there," she says. "It's all very visceral."

Ultimately, bringing the most dramatic moments in history to life on the big screen is what keeps Scott going. He just did it with his epic "Napoleon," and clearly sees plenty of fodder for such explorations in ancient Rome.

"I love doing period pieces, whether it's 'Napoleon' or this," he says. "I just have a passion for it. Frankly, modern drama often is just more boring. But here in Rome, well, when you boil it all down, you actually had Christian families crouching in a corner of the Colosseum as the lions would step up to them and quietly devour their children. That was real, that's not made up. It was worse than anything we all could imagine."

Scott pauses. Then his mind circles back to his esteemed peer Coppola, and he smiles.

"In fact," says Scott, "those Romans were no less ferocious than any mobster you could imagine."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Gladiator 3'? Ridley Scott is ready to return to the Colosseum