On Location: Where was Gladiator II filmed? (2024)

The grandeur and might of ancient Rome was on full display in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, a historical epic that starred Russell Crowe as ferocious gladiator Maximus. Returning to that world for Gladiator II, about Maximus’ son Lucius (Paul Mescal), not only meant reconstructing the city, but going even bigger. “It’s a total continuation,” explains production designer Arthur Max, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the first film, "It’s about 15 years later, after the death of Maximus, so essentially nothing would have changed in the Colosseum. We wanted it to be familiar for the people who loved Gladiator and identified with it. But we also wanted to boost the scale.”

To achieve that scale, Gladiator II returned to several of the countries where the first film was shot and took advantage of new technologies that have been developed in the years since. The Colosseum was reconstructed in Fort Ricasoli in Kalkara, Malta, same as Gladiator, with sets also built in Morocco and England. “We like recycling,” he notes of the decision to reuse locations more than two decades later.

Morocco stood in for the Roman-held North African kingdom of Numidia – mostly present-day Algeria – as the army of General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) captures Lucuis after a great battle. The story then shifts from Numidia to Rome, where Macrinus (Denzel Washington) trains Lucius for the arena, much to the delight of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and the horror of his mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). The Rome set was nearly five miles long, with a Colosseum replica that stood 46 feet high and was doubled digitally later. Despite the larger scale, Max and his team actually had less time to pull it off. “On the first one we had about 20 weeks of design work and prep, and 26 weeks of build,” he recalls. “And on Gladiator II we had barely 12 weeks of design and we had 20 weeks of build. So it was a running gun.”

Here, Max describes reimagining Rome, bringing the infamous shark battle to life and using every inch of Malta possible.

Where did you film in Morocco?

We went to Ouarzazate, where I’ve shot several times with Ridley before. We did a bit of Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies and Gladiator there. We used it for Numidia, but also for Antium, on the outskirts of Rome. We went back to my old Jerusalem set from Kingdom of Heaven and we transformed it [for the battle]. The set is about a mile outside of Ouarzazate, which is in the high Atlas Mountains. We extended the walls, put roofs on the towers, put geometric motifs onto all the doors and added ceramic tiles that had Numidian characteristics. And then we blew it all up.

How did you fake the battle being on the coast if it was shot in land-locked Ouarzazate?

You might think it sounds crazy to do a sea battle in the desert, but the visual effects supervisor recommended that it would be easier to put the water in with built sets than it would have been to put the sets in [the water with] the crowd and the stunt work. The ships were on these amazing 16-wheeled hydraulic dollies capable of independent leveling. They could roll and pitch and yaw like a ship, but entirely on dry land, and they were remote-controlled. So the water is digital except for a small pool, which was about 80-foot square where you see [the aftermath] of the battle.

Did you film in Morocco first?

Morocco was first because of the weather. The light is best in early springtime. And we wanted more time to build Rome. In the film, there’s a backstory of young Lucius, so we needed an Egyptian village where he's being secluded in exile. We found a location in Morocco that was an abandoned kasbah for that. We dressed it up and rehabilitated it and added on to it.

In Malta, why did you decide to return to Fort Ricasoli as the main set?

There's certain advantages to that location in that it has stone walls in limestone surrounding and enclosing the entire fort with battlements, which gives us a head start for free. On the first one, we didn’t use the whole site – only about half of it. This time, we spent a lot of time clearing out what was basically rubble and ruin under the supervision of the archaeological department in case we discovered anything of importance, which we did. We found some staircases and entries that they hadn't known about. Because of the sea battle, we had to enlarge the scale of the Colosseum to accommodate the water level and the ships coming through the archway. It was pretty much the same footprint, but we built to about half the height of the actual Colosseum. It took six weeks.

During the sea battle with the sharks, was there any actual water inside the Colosseum set?

On the perimeter wall there are masks of the sea god Neptune with water gushing out of his mouth as if filling the Colosseum. That's live water on a circular recycling pump and it lands in a great big tank, which was maybe 12 by 10 feet and about six feet deep. We had 14 of those, each with a tank under it. The rest of the arena was dry and the boats were on wheels, which we shipped from Morocco. We also went to the Malta Film Studios, which has one of the biggest tanks in the world, and we rebuilt a section of the Colosseum for water work. That way, we could have a live crowd and do all those scenes where the ships have collided and chaos ensues.

Did you use any other locations in Malta?

We knew we wanted to enlarge the Roman world to encompass more compelling sets that we hadn’t used before. Malta was riddled with old forts from the Napoleonic era on up to the World War II and all of them were built in this similar limestone. We basically filmed everywhere on the island. We used Fort Delimara for the interior tunnels of the Colosseum and Fort Manoel as [the location] where the gladiator training takes place. The road to Rome, in the finale, was an unspoiled valley of agricultural crops, which had orchards, olive trees, lemon trees and grapevines. We prefabbed the big arch with the wolf of Rome on top in our workshop in an ex-ship building facility in the Grand Harbor of Valletta. We reassembled it there and dug a trench and filled it with water for the stream.

What aspect of the film are you most proud of?

The finishes! You could go right up to them and you wouldn't know they weren't real marble or real gold or beautifully-made mosaics. All of the credit goes to the craftsman who came from England, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Germany, Croatia and even America. The job that they did is just amazing because of the new technologies supporting the handcrafts, which we didn't quite have before. There were different tools in the box.

Is the Colosseum still standing?

No. They always talk about keeping it, but they never do. When we got to Fort Ricasoli on the first film, it was basically derelict. Now it is essentially a studio backlot and [other productions] don’t want the Colosseum taking up most of the space. But Ridley is already talking aboutGladiator III, so if we do another iteration, we’ll be back, and we’ll do it all again.