Ridley Scott has begun to develop a sequel to Gladiator.

Axar.az reports that according to deadline, the director is set to take on the project for Paramount with a script to be written by Peter Craig, whose credits include The Town and the forthcoming sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

After Gladiator made $460m worldwide and won five Oscars, including best picture, talk of a sequel has come up in the years since. Nick Cave took it upon himself to write his own take that would have brought back Maximus from the dead via the body of a slain Christian martyr.

“Crowe rang me up and asked if I wanted to write Gladiator 2,” Cave said to Marc Maron in 2013. “For someone who had only written one film script, it was quite an ask. ‘Hey Russell, didn’t you die in Gladiator?’ ‘Yeah, you sort that out.’”

Last year, Scott said the script was “on the shelf”.

After 2012’s Prometheus, Scott made his second prequel to Alien last year before telling the story of the Getty kidnapping in All the Money in the World. He is currently directing his first TV series, Raised by Wolves, a sci-fi tale of androids raising human children. He is also attached to a drama about the life of photojournalist Lyndsey Addario, played by Scarlett Johansson.