If Oliver Reed had not died while the filming of Gladiator was in progress does any one know what would have become of his character in the film?
Is there any where on the net that has a copy of the original script with Oliver Reeds character still in it?
You can get the first (revised) and second drafts of the script at Drew’s Script-O-Rama. I scanned the second draft, and it seems as if Proximo, Reed’s character, meets the same destiny he does in the final cut of the film. However, he does manage to get in a few blows of his own before he gets it, which they obviously weren’t able to film.
In the commentary on the DVD, Ridley Scott suggests that Proximo was going to survive till the end, he was intended to be one of those people who, despite everything, still manages to always be around. He was the one who was originally going to have the final word in the movie, not Djimon Hounsou.