‘You can see the money’ Hollywood is banking on Gladiator II

A full-scale model of the Colosseum, flooded and filled with longboats. A two-tonne, eight-wheeled, life-sized rhino that can spin, snarl, wag its head and do 40mph. And as much minced beef, sweet potato and personal training as Paul Mescal can stomach.

- Catherine Shoard

Such are some of the huge costs involved in the production of Gladiator II, which comes to cinemas next month, 24 years after Ridley Scott's original.

Such conspicuous spending might be assumed to be making studio executives sweat, but Hollywood is banking on it being a commercial success, particularly given the calamitous box office for another recent sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips's follow-up to his billion-dollar 2019 hit, now fast-tracked to streaming and projected to lose $200m (£153m).

Gladiator II's excess adds up, says Steven Gaydos, the executive editor of Variety. “You can see the money on screen,” he says. The opposite was true for Joker 2. “Had they shot it for $80m it would have been tremendously profitable. Instead they spent $200m on two people singing in a room.”