It was the year 2000 when Ridley Scott surprised the cinemas with this film set in ancient Rome. It soon became one of the biggest hits of a century that had just begun, but not everything has been a bed of roses for this film. The project began with David Franzoni, who based his first draft on the essay Those About to Die by Daniel P. Mannix, but everything changed with the arrival of Ridley Scott. From there, the collaboration of several screenwriters was necessary to give the story its final form.

But if there was one thing that was not lacking in this process, it was tension in the team, especially due to Russell Crowe’s critical attitude towards the dialogues… The actor had no qualms about commenting years later that his lines were “garbage”, going so far as to say: “I am the best actor in the world and I can even make garbage sound good.”

Crowe was aware at the time that one of the most important things for any actor is to convey his messages emotionally, but the actor rejected several lines from his script and continually wanted to remove them or rewrite them. What’s more, even one of his character’s most iconic lines, “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius (…) And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next”, was initially rejected by the actor.