MOVIE NEWS – Legendary director Steven Spielberg plans to bring Stanley Kubrick’s lost film Napoleon to life on the TV screen.

After years of planning and speculation, one of the potentially greatest films never made is finally getting the second chance it deserves. According to Collider, during a visit to the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, acclaimed director Steven Spielberg officially announced that he is now teaming up with HBO on a “major production” to bring Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon to life in a seven-part limited series. While the streaming platform has confirmed the series, there is no premiere date yet.

Spielberg is working on the project with Christiane Kubrick and executive producer Jan Harlan, who worked with the late Stanley Kubrick on several of his most famous films, including The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

Steven Spielberg first announced the project to revive Kubrick’s lost screenplay back in 2013. In the following years, he worked on putting it together amidst his other projects. Later, in 2016, HBO got on board, but no further news on the series has been announced. Spielberg has not yet clarified where production stands. With no casting news, it is more than likely still in the early stages. Regardless, this major announcement is a huge step forward for Kubrick’s final film, and it couldn’t be in better hands.

Kubrick’s vision of the famous French conqueror

Napoleon, originally planned to be made after Kubrick’s award-winning sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), was to have been an intense biopic of the life of the notorious and eccentric French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite Kubrick’s reputation as a director, the production failed to attract nearly enough funding to match the colossal scale of the project at the time. In addition, another Napoleon-centred film, Waterloo, had just flopped at the box office, so there was little reason to try again.

The original ‘lost script’ was actually a compilation of at least 800 pages, including various notes, photographs and a rubric for Kubrick’s screenplay.

The ambitious size of the production was increased by the fact that 40,000 soldiers would have made up Napoleon’s army. All this instead of special effects, which Kubrick notoriously disliked including in any of his films. Even Jack Nicholson, who later starred in the supernatural horror classic The Shining, was considered for the lead role of Napoleon. He chose Audrey Hepburn as Josephine, the statesman’s wife.

It remains to be seen how similar Spielberg’s production demands will be. But given his own directorial methods, which have never shied away from large-scale ventures, and his preference for practical effects rather than CGI, there is no doubt that his adaptation of Kubrick’s vision will be a marvel. We will also be curious to see how Ridley Scott’s very similar film, also Napoleon (2023), starring Joaquin Phoenix, will fare alongside Spielberg’s version.

Source: Collider