Gladiator Ii is finding a fresh audience nearly a year after its release, climbing to the seventh spot on Netflix’s global Top 10 as viewers in countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Lebanon push the Roman epic back into the spotlight.
The film, released on Nov. 22, 2024, earned $462 million at the box office after taking viewers back to ancient Rome 15 years after Maximus died in the original film. Paul Mescal stars as Lucius Verus Aurelius, the son of Lucilla, whose peaceful life is shattered when Roman soldiers intervene and he becomes a prisoner of war and slave to Macrinus. That run was enough to make it one of the more visible titles on streaming this week, sitting between Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill and Despicable Me 4 on the global chart.
The sequel is available to stream in the United States on Paramount+ and internationally on Netflix, giving it a second life after theaters. That matters because the movie’s production costs climbed past $200 million, leaving its box office finish short of expectations even though critics gave it a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences marked it at 80% on the Popcornmeter. The first Gladiator, released in 2000, earned $466 million and still holds an 80% critics’ score and 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a reminder of the standard the sequel was always measured against.
The mismatch is the point: Gladiator Ii did not become the financial hit Paramount wanted, but it also did not disappear. In August 2025, Ridley Scott said Gladiator III is “in process right now,” a sign the franchise is moving ahead because the appetite for Rome never really left.
