Gladiator 2 to feature Paul Mescal’s character fighting a pack of baboons

Gladiator 2 will feature Paul Mescal’s character fighting a pack of baboons!

The very thought raises a red flag in the minds of the original Gladiator movie fans, either it’s going to be a miss or we might get a new epic.

Ridley Scott, who has been editing the footage has revealed. Honestly, we can’t wait.

In Scott’s original “Gladiator,” Russell Crowe faced off against Joaquin Phoenix which grossed a whopping $503 million at the box office worldwide in 2000 and also won the Oscar for best picture.

While this upcoming “Gladiator 2” starring Paul Mescal will apparently be going head-to-head against a pack of baboons.

The other cast of the sequel includes Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, and Pedro Pascal.

In a recent New Yorker profile, Ridley Scott revealed that he had been editing the 90 minutes of footage he was able to capture for “Gladiator 2” before the Hollywood strikes shut down production.

Scott being on an enforced hiatus, has been busy preparing an extended cut of “Napoleon” for Apple, which produced and will stream the film. He’d been editing what he had of “Gladiator 2,” slated for release next fall.

Scott was shooting the long-awaited “Gladiator” sequel in Morocco when filming halted indefinitely amid the strike.

And he can’t resume production until the SAG-AFTRA strike is resolved.

‘I could shoot on Monday,’ he said. (The talks fell apart a week later.) In the meantime, he’d been polishing the 90 minutes he had, including a scene in which the hero fights a pack of baboons; he’d been haunted, he said, by a video of baboons attacking tourists in Johannesburg: ‘Baboons are carnivores. Can you hang from that roof for two hours by your left leg? No! A baboon can,’ he added.

For those unserved, “Gladiator 2” is set years after the events of the original and follows an adult Lucius (Mescal), the nephew of Commodus (Phoenix).

And that’s the obvious reason that original star Crowe is not involved in the sequel.

Russel Crowe has repeatedly said that neither Scott nor anyone involved with “Gladiator 2” reached out to him since the sequel has nothing to do with the character he played in the original.

Crowe even urged the reporters to stop asking him about the “Gladiator” sequel at the Karlovy Film Festival in July.

“They should be f**king paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in,” Crowe said.

“It has nothing to do with me. In that world, I am dead. Six feet under. But I do admit to a certain tinge of jealousy, because it reminds me of when I was younger and what it meant for me, in my life.”