Gladiator
Gladiator (2000 movie)
Ridley Scott was persuaded to direct the film when DreamWorks head Walter F. Parkes and producer Douglas Wick presented him with a reproduction of the 1872 painting Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down") by Jean-Leon Gerome, in which a gladiator stands over the opponent he has beaten. On visiting the real Colosseum, Scott remarked to production designer Arthur Max that it was "too small", so they designed an outsized "Rome of the imagination" that was inspired by English and French romantic painters, as well as Nazi architect Albert Speer. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator_%282000_movie%29#Trivia [Jun 2005]