Roland Emmerich traveled back to 79 AD for season one of his gladiator drama Those About to Die . For season two, he has dreams of traveling back even earlier.
“We hope to do a little bit what Godfather II did,” Emmerich told The Hollywood Reporter of a potential season two. Emmerich says the show could tell dual stories using a “present timeline” and a “past timeline,” ala 1974’s The Godfather Part II , which explored the rise of Vito Corelione (Robert De Niro) via flashbacks and continued the story of his son Michael Corelione (Al Pacino) in the “present day” story.
In Those About to Die season two, the flashbacks would explore The Year of Four Emperors, which took place 10 years before the events of the show and included seismic moments, such as the suicide of Emperor Nero and the subsequent power grab amongst competing leaders — ultimately ending with Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins) ruling Rome.
There’s plenty of drama involving new characters (Emmerich is dreaming of who could play Nero) as well as characters we’ve grown to know. Domitian (Jojo Macari), who ended season one as emperor, was just 18 during the Year of Four Emperors, and faced several death-defying moments that Emmerich is eager to explore.
The filmmaker, known for helming disaster films such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow , Zoomed with THR off the coast of Greece from a boat he has owned for nearly 20 years. It was part of a much-needed respite after the grueling task of getting ten hours of television out into the world.
“You have to rest your brain once in a while, and I just don’t want to think about anything,” said Emmerich.
Roland Emmerich attends 2024 San Diego Comic-Con.
Season one of the show streamed on Peacock in the U.S. and on Amazon internationally. Though Peacock does not share detailed data with Emmerich, the show bowed at No. 6 on the Nielsen streaming charts for original series for the July 22-28 week, notching 399 million minutes viewed. And Parrot Analytics said it was Peacock’s no. 1 show for the week of Aug. 16-22, in terms of projects that debuted over the past year.
Emmerich directed five episodes of Those About to Die , with Marco Kreuzpaintner taking duties on the other five. During the 108-day shoot, Emmerich estimated he spent around 45 percent of his time in Volume, the virtual production set popularized by The Mandalorian .
Emmerich expects to hand off the day-to-day operations of Those About to Die season two to another filmmaker, though he’d likely direct a few episodes. This would give him time to bring another passion project to the screen: Lawrence in Arabia , his own take on the film that he’s working on with writer Anthony McCarten.
He calls it “ In Arabia , because it has a little bit more characters” than the beloved 1962 movie starring Peter O’Toole. The duo are taking the show out next month to potential partners, and have a three-season plan.
Though he’s taking a detour into television, he still has ambitions to get back to the big screen as well.
He still holds a longtime hope of making a Marilyn Monroe biopic, and says the Ana De Armas-starrer Blonde has not deterred him. “You have to talk to the estate. And the estate naturally wants to have no criticism,” notes Emmerich. “They don’t, for example, want to have her be a drug addict. She was a drug addict. How do you write that out?”
And he also has a mysterious political movie.
“It’s not ready yet to go out. And I also want to be a little bit careful. Let’s say if Trump wins, I don’t think I will make the movie for four years,” he says with a laugh.
As for Those About to Die , Emmerich’s interest dates back decades. In fact, he recalls a meeting with Steven Spielberg in which Emmerich inquired about a Roman project he heard the legendary filmmaker was developing. Recalls Emmerich: “He said, ‘Oh, we just gave this a week ago to Ridley (Scott).'”
Those About to Die and the first Gladiator movie drew upon the same source material, Daniel P. Mannix’s novel Those About to Die . Twenty years later, it is just a coincidence Those About to Die arrived on TV months before Scott’s Gladiator II hits in theaters in November. While there are similarities, Emmerich notes he had to get inventive to stretch his budget over 10 hours vs. the length of one feature.
“You have maybe $140, $150 million — and somebody like Ridley makes one movie, and it’s $250 million,” Emmerich says with a laugh.
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