Gladiator Hits IMAX, DVD; Scott Eyes Pirate Pic
November 21 -- If you got dizzy craning your head to the top of the digitally recreated Colosseum in Gladiator, you ain't seen nothing yet. The blockbuster epic, which is the second-highest-grossing film of 2000 to date, is getting even bigger. Literally.
DreamWorks Pictures announced Monday that it will re-release the Oscar hopeful on IMAX screens in major cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Toronto, beginning Wednesday.
If you don't live in any of those cities, take heart that today also marks the day you can get your sweaty mitts on the DVD and the video of the Roman slash-o-rama. Gladiator has sat atop Amazon's DVD sales charts for weeks, and advanced sales have already set records, according to media reports.
The studio has shipped a record 2.6 million copies of the DVD version to retailers in the United States, Variety reports.
Crowe Is Dangerous, Scott Kidds AroundThe men behind the bloody tale of old-style heroism and vengeance are also on a roll. Star Russell Crowe will next do A Dangerous Mind, a biopic about John Nash, the brilliant Nobel Prize winner who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. (In other words, the kind of role that's pure catnip to Oscar voters.) Ron Howard will direct. Ed Harris has just signed on to join the production, which starts shooting in mid-March.
Gladiator director Ridley Scott already has a follow-up flick — the highly anticipated Silence of the Lambs sequel, Hannibal — but he's setting his sights on a tougher audience sell. The helmer of Blade Runner, Alien, and Thelma and Louise successfully revived the sword-and-sandal genre, and now he wants to do the same for pirates. Obviously the phrase "Cutthroat Island" doesn't hold the same fear for him that it does for the rest of the world.
Variety notes that Disney has acquired Captain Kidd, a pitch for a high-seas adventure movie based on the life of the notorious but fair-hearted 17th-century pirate. Scott will direct, while his Scott Free Films banner will produce with Jerry Bruckheimer. Them's some pretty big box-office guns. OK, we'll bite.
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