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GO! lands Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Spartacus: Blood and Sand is coming to GO! -with a movie length episode in August.

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Finally an answer….

Spartacus: Blood and Sand is coming to GO! -as soon as August, no less.

The announcement of the Starz Network show about gladiators follows considerable hype in the US for its graphic violence, strong sexual content, and coarse language.

GO! will kick off the series with a movie-length episode, featuring its Australian star Andy Whitfield. No airdate has yet been announced.

A prequel, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, is also to be produced in New Zealand, including with Aussie actor Dustin Clare.

With a superb cast of victims and villains, Spartacus: Blood and Sand stars Australian Andy Whitfield (McLeod’s Daughters) as Spartacus alongside John Hannah (The Mummy Trilogy, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) who play cunning Batiatus, Spartacus’s owner, and his insatiable wife Lucretia.

Producers/film makers Sam Raimi (Spiderman), Josh Donen (The Quick and the Dead) and Robert Tapert (The Grudge) have combined a potent mixture of live action, graphic special effects and brutal battle sequences in a violent and provocative depiction of the rise of Rome’s most infamous gladiator.

Betrayed by the Roman army he fought for and torn from the home and the woman he loves, Spartacus is forced into the barbaric world of the gladiator arena. Corruption, treachery and carnal pleasures test him, and survival requires that he be more than a man, more than a gladiator – that he becomes Spartacus the legend.

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  2. Agree about the cartoonish element to the violence – it was like watching 300 again, at first. But depiction of violence is more likely to push the serious complainers’ buttons than sex/nudity… that normally draws “tut tuts” & mild distaste, but people still watch it (funny that). Violence normally gets comments like “It will influence other people, but not me of course”. 🙂 …& many calls for bans/censorship. The nanny state tends to listen to those sort of issues rather than those about bare flesh.

    As long as the series doesn’t get too butchered in editing, I’m sure that the show will rate its sandals off.

  3. The violence is generally so cartooney that the slow motion fountains of blood should be fine. Some stuff is quite graphic, but the blood stuff is so stylistic it should be fine. Issue is the constant nudity and sex.

  4. The edits (if any) will be interesting. Most of the sex scenes will probably survive; the violence as regards “neck fountains” & dismemberment may not. The language? Well the f-words (many) might be there but the torrent of c-words may not… poor “little rabbit” 🙂

    Despite all of these matters, Spartacus is one of my favourite recent shows – good quality apart from the obvious titillation effort for the more juvenile demographic.

  5. Great news.

    Also good to hear they’re showing the first two episodes together. I found the first episode to be far too … extreme in pretty much every respect, but once the story-lines and characters start to develop (especially from around episodes 3/4 onwards, I was addicted). Hopefully showing episodes 1 and 2 at the same time will encourage people to stick around since the season only gets better and better.

    It will be interesting to see how much editing (if any) the show suffers or whether they’re going to screen the long-rumoured “edited” version created by the producers.

  7. Could be cut, but GO! has screened some pretty nasty stuff. It’d be a big mistake to edit this as it’ll just drive viewers away to other resources.

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