Highest-grossing gladiator movie
- Who
- Gladiator
- What
- 457,683,805 US dollar(s)
- Where
- Not Applicable
- When
- 05 May 2000
The most successful gladiator movie is – aptly – Gladiator (USA/UK, 2000), which grossed $457,683,805 (£306,450,000) at the worldwide box office, according to The Numbers. The bloody epic was directed by Ridley Scott (UK) and starred Australia's Russell Crowe as the titular Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, who in the year AD180 is forced to fight as a gladiator in the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.
A resurgence in sword-and-sandals movies followed in the wake of Scott's Gladiator, although it was in the 1950s and early 1960s that the genre peaked in terms of movies produced. Classic gladiator titles include Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), Spartacus (USA, 1960) and Barabbas (USA, 1961).