Russell Crowe is sick of talking about Gladiator 2, a movie he is not in

Russell Crowe is not in Gladiator 2. He’s handed off the sandals and the MF DOOM mask (R.I.P.) to a younger generation of handsome men—specifically Paul Mescal—and yet people insist on asking him about it, to the point where he told reporters at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (via Variety) that he’s fucking over it.

Alright, he didn’t literally say that. What he literally said was, “They should be fucking paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in.” And you know what? He’s right! He’s doing free PR for that movie when he should be doing free PR for Kraven The Hunter! We’ve got more questions about that one than we do about Gladiator 2. “It has nothing to do with me,” he added, “In that world, I am dead. Six feet under.”

Crowe’s character in Ridley Scott’s original Gladiator, a betrayed general named Maximus who goes on a quest for vengeance in the film, dies at the end after killing Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus and advocating for political reforms (it’s a cool movie). So he’s definitely not in the new one, and he would be happy if everyone stopped checking in with him about it. “I know that if Ridley has decided to do a second part of the story, over 20 years later,” he noted, “he must have very strong reasons. I can’t think of this movie being anything other than spectacular.”

But that’s not the only thing Crowe is going off on at the Czech festival. He also complained about reporters asking him too many questions about beer, saying, “You people are obsessed. No more questions about beer, I don’t give a shit” before noting that he’d rather drink Guinness than anything else. He also teased that he’s sitting on some unreleased documentary films that he won’t put out until they’re “legally comfortable,” which is to say that he has to “wait for some people to die” before he can do it.

Crowe also once again sang the praises of Master And Commander, a movie that he will heroically defend for as long as he lives, citing the fact that it unfortunately opened after Pirates Of The Caribbean, which made the studio think they had to market it as “Gladiator goes to sea,” which turned off director Peter Weir’s regular audience and instead tired to attract what Crowe calls “the dumb kids.”

Regarding his future, Crowe said that the’s been looking at Ridley Scott’s career, where he keeps working and finding new things to say, and Crowe says he’ll either do that or just give up and “you will never hear from me again.” He figures those are “two very valid choices.”