When the first trailer of Ridley Scott's Gladiator 2 was released, fans all over the internet started posting their reactions to it on social media.
However, there's another tidbit about the film that has fans active online: its release date coinciding with Wicked's.
The Jon M. Chu-directed film moved its premiere date five days earlier than initially announced. So on Nov. 22, Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington are going head-to-head with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
Gladiator II and Wicked: Wickdiator or Glicked?
This dual release calls to mind the rivalry of last year's biggest movies: Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. The weekend both film were released became the biggest movie event of 2023 and was called Barbenheimer.
However, coming up with a portmanteau for Gladiator II and Wicked seems a touch more difficult than Barbie and Oppenheimer. Fans have so far come up with the unwieldy Wickdiator and Glicked.
One question: Is that pronounced as glikd or gli-ked? I'm sure it's the second, right?
“Wickdiator doesn't really roll off the tongue does it?” Mescal asked in an Entertainment Tonight exclusive interview when he was told about the smashing of the titles together.
“I think my preference would probably be Glicked if it has a similar effect to what it did for Barbie and Oppenheimer. It would be amazing 'cause I think the films couldn't be more polar opposites and it worked in that context previously. So fingers crossed people come out and see both films on opening weekend,” he added.
Will they be the next Barbenheimer?
The actor is right in the stark differences of the films: one's adapted from Broadway with musical powerhouses singing songs that have been ingrained in plenty of people's brains. Wicked has also been embedded in a lot of people's cultural memory far longer.
Gladiator II, on the other hand, is a sequel to a massively successful film that was released 24 years ago. Which makes its new star, Mescal, only four years old when the film came out. He told ET that he had seen the movie 10 years after it was released and became a huge fan. So leading its sequel must be quite daunting for him.
“I think the main thing that I'm excited about is the homage that it pays to the first one, but also the kind of new direction that the film takes,” he told the entertainment website.
“I think it's well balanced in that regard in terms of the physical action of the film and the balance of the kind of political aspects of the film as well,” the actor continued.
Scott told Vanity Fair that he took notice of Mescal and wanted to cast him as Lucius when he saw his performance on Hulu's Normal People.
“When I watch anything, I tend to be clocking who's interesting. It's just in my DNA. And so, watching a TV show that's not really my kind of TV show almost four years ago, I said, ‘Who's this guy?'” the filmmaker said of the actor who played the lead in the series adaption of Sally Rooney's 2018 best-selling novel.
The director said that he arranged a Zoom meeting with Mescal when he was in the stage play A Streetcar Named Desire in London.
“I met with him and he said, ‘Of course, I'd love to do it.' And that was it. We were away and running with the ball. He was a special find. He was absolutely perfect,” Scott recalled.
Mescal said that their meeting took “about 20 to 30 minutes.”
Maybe it's the Gaelic football that did it
“I wanted to get a flavor from him about what the story was going to be about, so we spent about 15 minutes talking about that, and then we spent another 10 minutes talking about the sport that I played growing up — Gaelic football. Maybe that was something that helped with it, in that I'm used to being physical in my body,” the actor explained.
He also added that Scott decided later on that a camera test wouldn't be necessary. A few weeks later, Mescal was offered the part.
The Academy Award-nominated actor said his casting was “an immense honor” and that the significance of the role isn't lost on him. He is aware that the movie is “hugely important to a lot of people across the world.”
Mescal shares the Colosseum with Oscar winner Washington, who plays the former slave-turned-rich-arms-broker Macrinus, Pascal who plays the Roman general Acacius, with Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi reprising their roles as Lucilla and Senator Gracchus, respectively.
A surreal Gladiator experience
“I am in scenes with the great Denzel Washington and have made great friends with Pedro and Joe (Joseph Quinn who plays one of the emperors Geta) and Connie and Fred (Hechinger who plays the other emperor Caracalla),” Mescal said about his co-stars.
“I think for a lot of us, especially the younger cohort of the cast, we would easily say that it's a job that changed our lives in the filming process and at the precipice of it coming out into the world. We're kind of waiting with bated breath, but the thing that I keep coming back to is, we've done it. We've gone and made it and nobody can take that away from us. And we had the king that is Ridley Scott at the helm — like, it's amazing,” he continued, full of praise for the cast and director.
Mescal added that the original Gladiator is a movie “a lot of men my age” learn to “quote religiously.”
I know exactly which quote it is because while I am neither a man nor the actor's age, I, too, can quote that speech religiously.
And in the same vein, I also know the lyrics to almost all of the songs from Wicked.
Gladiator II and Wicked — or shall we now get comfortable saying Glicked — will be released in cinemas Nov. 22.
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