Gladiator Producer Reveals His Biggest Regret About the Film

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator took home five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, but while many audiences would consider it a major accomplishment, producer Doug Wick recently detailed that he did still have a regret about the picture, which is that they couldn’t deliver a CG rhinoceros in any of the epic battles that Scott had hoped to include. While there might not be any official plans of when a follow-up film could be moving forward, the producer noted that, were such a project ever to take place, he hopes to right that wrong and deliver the CG rhino that Scott deserves.

“There are issues that were really more about cost,” Wick shared with ComicBook.com about the film. “Which is, for example, Ridley wanted a rhino in the arena. And, when we talked to the animal trainers, they said, ‘Well, they’re great to work with, but once you start it, you can’t stop it.’ So then we priced a CG rhino and it was just too expensive. So I would say that was one of the regrets, we couldn’t give Ridley a CG rhino.”

He added, “It’s a running joke, that if we ever do a sequel, Ridley gets his rhino.”

The nature of filmmaking has evolved so much in the decades since the film hit theaters that virtually anything that can be imagined can be conjured by a visual effects team at a fraction of the cost of what the industry used to offer.

Prior to the debut of Gladiator, one of the biggest period spectacles was Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, which largely embraced practical effects to depict a war-torn Scotland in the 13th century. A number of films had previously delivered adventures set in a similar timeframe to Gladiator, but none had managed to capture the scope and scale of Rome at the height of its glory in such a way as Scott’s film.

In what was considered relatively ambitious at the time of filming, to capture the sheer scale of the gladiatorial arenas, only sections of the famous Colosseum were recreated, while CG effects allowed the production team to then build the rest of the stadium in a computer. Another unique visual effect in the film was caused by Oliver Reed’s passing during production, which required a CG double of the actor to seamlessly be inserted into the film to conclude his character’s journey.

Gladiator will be landing on a 20th-anniversary 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray SteelBook on June 16th.

Are you hoping to get a CG rhino in a sequel? Let us know in the comments below!