What do you when your show has been picked up for a second season before the first one even airs and your star winds up with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma? If you’re the creative team behind Spartacus: Blood and Sand, you come up with a prequel that uses many of your other cast of characters.
Pre-production is underway on a six-part prequel to the Starz hit series with the story of rise of the House of Batiatus and its champions before Spartacus arrives as a captured Thracian slave. Series star Andy Whitfield, who played the title character in the series, will appear in the prequel briefly, but Lucy Lawless [Lucretia] and John Hannah [Batiatus] take center stage. Though the title is still to be determined, the prequel will begin production this summer in New Zealand, and is slated to air on Starz in January 2011.
Other returning actors include Peter Mensah (Doctore), Manu Bennett (Crixus), Antonio Te Maioha
(Barca), Nick E. Tarabay (Ashur), Lesley-Ann Brandt (Naevia) – and others. New characters will also be
added – most notably the gladiator who was champion of the House of Batiatus before Spartacus or even Crixus – who will help fill in the story about the people and politics in the House of Batiatus and ancient Capua as a whole.
Production on the second season of “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” was postponed this spring to allow Whitfield to be treated for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in New Zealand. His doctors indicate that the actor is responding well.