Roland Emmerich surrounds himself with a luxury cast for the series “Those About To Die” which does not yet have a release date.
The peplum is back in fashion. While Ridley Scott is in the middle of filming Gladiator 2 – paralyzed, for the moment, by the strike of the actors -, Amazon Prime Video has just announced (via SensaCine) its new addition to the genre: Those About To Die, a series to 140 million dollars of ten episodes created by Roland Emmerich.
This sum of money, already so substantial, places it far behind the productions of Amazon Citadel (300 million) and The Rings of Power (465 million). But even if its budget is lower, such a deployment of resources still indicates that it is a big bet for the platform for years to come.
VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND GLADIATORS
The series, which is inspired by the non-fiction books of the same name by Daniel P. Mannix, will take us on a journey into the corrupt and fascinating world of chariot races and gladiatorial combats which triumphed in ancient Rome. In AD 79, the Roman Empire controls its bored and increasingly violent population with free food and entertainment. Four aristocratic factions control the spectacles: Blue, Red, White, and Green. When the city’s taste for entertainment becomes more bloodthirsty, a stadium will be specially designed for gladiator fights: the Colosseum.
At the controls of production, Roland Emmerich, known for his gigantic disaster films: Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009), all with a doomsday theme and a very spectacular visual component. We imagine that this style will be transposed, in a smaller way, to the tank races and deathmatches that he offers for Prime Video.
And if the show promises bloody action in ancient Rome, the comparison with Gladiator or the Spartacus series is therefore inevitable. There is no release date for the fiction yet but we know it will star Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian, Iwan Rheon as Tenax, Tom Hughes as Titus Flavianus, Sara Martins in Cala and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson in Viggo. See you on Amazon so, we hope very soon.
In the meantime, Gladiator is to be reviewed on Amazon Prime Video and Spartacus, the series, on MyCanal.