Spartacus

Celia Imrie tells the story of the 1960 epic Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, revealing how the film, which was then the most expensive of all time, made it onto the big screen.

Interviews from the BBC archives with key cast members, including Tony Curtis, Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons and Kirk Douglas himself, expose the battles behind the scenes that saw the first director getting fired in favour of new talent Stanley Kubrick and demonstrate how it was the gritty determination of leading man Douglas that led to the film defeating Hollywood’s notorious anti-communist blacklist.