The immense commercial and critical success of Ridley Scott’s *Gladiator* in 2000 rekindled Hollywood studios’ interest in big-budget sword-and-sandal epics. Among the flurry of similar projects greenlit in those years, arguably the most ambitious and grandest of all was Wolfgang Petersen’s *Troy* (2004). Its long and complicated production, marked by casting coups and monumental set-building, created a buzz that ot…







