Angels Actor Denzel Washington is in final talks with director Ridley Scott to star alongside Paul Mezcal in the sequel to the blockbuster Gladiator.

According to an exclusive from Deadline, Washington is interested in playing the character that Scott wrote for him. The actor and the director have already worked together on the film “American Gangster” in 2007.

The new Paramount film, which is scheduled to premiere on November 22, 2024, has already added Barry Keoghan, recently nominated for an Oscar for his role in Banshee of Inishreen, to the cast.

Gladiator 2 will continue the story filmed in 2001 by Russell Crowewho gave birth to Maximus, which was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won five of those awards, including Best Picture.

In this sequel, Paul Mezcal will play Lucius, a man who remembers the gladiator Maximus well after he saved him and his mother from death.

The production companies responsible for the project are Scott Free, led by Ridley Scott and Michael Pruss, and Red Wagon Entertainment, led by Lucy Fisher and Douglas Vick. The latter was also a producer of Gladiator.

Additionally, the team will include cinematographer John Matheson, production director Arthur Max and costume designer Janty Yates, all of whom previously worked on Gladiator.

Scott is also working as a producer on the sequel to another of his most famous projects.

This is the Blade Runner 2099 series, which continues the films inspired by the famous novel of the American writer Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” 1968.

Denzel Washington’s last project was Macbeth in 2021, which earned him an Oscar nomination, and this year he is expected to star in Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer 3.