While the world of cinema is no stranger to Nick Cave, the antipodean singer-songwriter who released brilliant and brooding songs such as The Mercy Seat and Where the Wild Roses Grow, it is pretty strange to see him be part of the Hollywood engine that churned out Gladiator. This week it was revealed that Cave wrote a sequel to the sword-and-sandal hit, at the behest of fellow Ozzie Russell Crowe.
Many would be confused at how a sequel was possible considering the end of the original, but Cave, obsessed with the afterlife (his Lyre of Orpheus album is one of his best), sets the story in the Roman afterlife, as our hero Maximus is reincarnated in an attempt to find his son, and ends up living well into the 21st Century. Sounds strange? Well, it is, so much so that the script was rejected and the film will never be made, despite Crowe’s positive response to the story and Cave’s writing. For more details on the story, including sample dialogue, head here.
In other news relating to Nick Cave, John Hillcoat (director of the Cave-written The Proposition) is also set to direct Cave’s next script, Death of a Ladies’ Man.
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