See Paul Mescal Enter the Arena in the Explosive First Trailer for ‘Gladiator II’

More than two decades on, Ridley Scott’s seminal, best picture-winning action epic Gladiator is getting a sequel—and, by all accounts, it’s going to be a corker. Starring a hulking Paul Mescal, now a world away from Normal People’s sensitive Connell Waldron, as Lucius, the son of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla and the nephew of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus, it’ll see our magnetic lead step into the arena and fight to the death.

Per Vanity Fair, the new film will pick up decades after the first, with Lucius having “come of age far away from his mother. While he was still a child, Lucilla sent him to the northern coast of Africa, to a region called Numidia that was (at that point) just outside the reach of the Roman Empire. He never fully understood why, and as he grew stronger, so did his resentment—even if his mother’s reasons had been pure… As Gladiator II begins, Lucius has a wife and child, and lives a relatively peaceful life with them until conquerors from his homeland begin to encroach.”