Ridley Scott to work on apocalypse movie after Gladiator 2

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 is out later this week but we already know what the director is working on next.

The Dog Stars is Scott’s next big project, according to Deadline.

While not part of a cinematic legacy like Gladiator, The Dog Stars is a known entity. It’s a book by Peter Heller, released in 2012.

The world has been laid low by catastrophe, a combo of a pandemic and the effects of climate change, and we join the story with Hig. He’s a pilot who lives with his dog out by an abandoned airport in Colorado.

He uses his Cessna airplane to seek out other survivors, beyond his uneasy companion Bagley, who also lives in the airport. But he's running out of fuel.

Gladiator 2 star Paul Mescal is returning to work with Ridley Scott on The Dog Stars, or they are in “advance negotiations” at least, says Deadline. We assume Mescal will play Hig given his burgeoning cinema stature.

Constantin Film acquired the rights to the more than decade-old novel earlier this year, and were previously held by New Regency Pictures. In 2022 we heard the rights also came with a script by Mark L. Smith, who wrote screenplays for Twisters, The Revenant and The Midnight Sky.

GQ called the book “The Road - but with hope,” which offers some idea of what to expect from The Dog Stars. With shooting expected to take place next year, it will be some time before it arrives on screens.

It’s bad news, though, for big fans of The Bee Gees. One other Ridley Scott project in the works is a biopic about the sibling supergroup, currently titled You Should Be Dancing.

It was pencilled in for filming in early 2025, but by the sounds of it The Dog Star may have nudged the biopic to later in the year, at the least.

Scott is in a highly productive stage of his career, not held back by the fact his last major movie, 2023's Napoleon, was a box office disappointment that also received mixed reviews.

For now, though, it's all eyes on Gladiator 2. The film has already had multiple screenings. Early social media reviews are lodged between saying it doesn’t quite have the punch of the original and that it’s a worthy follow-up. We’ll have a much clearer view later this week, as its first performances kick off on Thursday evening.

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