‘Those About to Die’: The historically inaccurate book that inspired ‘Gladiator’
Ridley Scott’s ‘Best Picture’-winning Gladiator was a work of fiction that was nonetheless inspired by real events and historical happenings, but it didn’t go so far as to credit the literary inspirations that influenced the screenplay to begin with.
In the earliest stages of development, David Franzoni – who was credited as a co-writer of the screenplay and received the sole story credit – envisioned something along the lines of Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 novel Those About to Die. After the film came out, the book was somewhat suspiciously reprinted under the alternate title of The Way of the Gladiator, even if the filmmakers didn’t acknowledge it.
That being said, they don’t have many direct similarities other than their setting and focus on the brutal, bloody barbarism of gladiatorial combat, although Franzoni did concede that “what was in the book was an understanding of how to connect who and how we were to who and how they were”.
Those About to Die wasn’t egregiously inaccurate, either, at least not for anyone who wasn’t a studious scholar familiar with the minutiae of ancient Rome. There was plenty of historical accuracy, authenticity, and research that went into crafting Mannix’s story, but there was a significantly heightened element that dramatically upped the body count and barbarism, if not to an overwhelming extent.
Mannix drew from everything and everyone, ranging from historical accounts from Roman poets to how the Maasai warriors of Africa would use their spears to fend off lion attacks, while the guy who trained the original mascot of the famous MGM introduction was also quizzed on how the big cats would behave when placed under pressure.
Not quite devotedly slavish, then, but rooted in fact nonetheless. It inadvertently created a domino effect, too, with Those About to Die influencing Gladiator, which led to the book being republished as The Way of the Gladiator to play up those connections, with Those About to Die now being adapted – with credit for Mannix this time – as a blockbuster streaming series being spearheaded by Roland Emmerich.
It’s historical fiction without a doubt, but as much as Mannix takes liberties with names, games, executions, and other assorted obstacles the gladiatorial combatants had to leap through in order to ensure their survival – the rates of which were much higher in real life than they were in his book – it wasn’t as if he simply sat down and pulled the whole story from the top of his head and committed it to print.
Will the Emmerich-packed and more slavish adaptation follow suit? Only time will tell, but the connection between Those About to Die and Gladiator is well-known enough that it places additional pressure on its spiritual successor to succeed, given that Scott’s epic won ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars and ignited the historical blockbuster’s most recent boom period.
