After years of planning and speculation, one of the potentially greatest movies that never came to be is finally getting a much-deserved second chance. Per areportfrom Collider, during his visit to the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, acclaimed directorSteven Spielbergofficially announced that he is now putting together a “large scale production” with HBO to bring Stanley Kubrick’sNapoleonto life as a seven-part limited series. While confirmed for the streaming platform, there is no tentative release window for the series just yet.
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Spielberg is collaborating on the project with Christiane Kubrick and executive producer Jan Harlan, who worked with the late Stanley Kubrick on a number of his famous films such asThe Shining(1980) andEyes Wide Shut(1999). Spielberg first announced the project that would resurrect Kubrick’s lost screenplay back in 2013, and worked on bringing it together amidst his other projects over the next several years. HBO later came on board in 2016, but news on the series otherwise stayed mum. Spielberg has also yet to clarify where production is at, and given the lack of any casting news, it’s more than likely that it remains in early stages. Nonetheless, this major announcement is a huge step forward for what would be the last of Kubrick’s creations, and it couldn’t possibly be in better hands.
Kubrick’s Vision of a Famed French Conqueror
Napoleon, which was originally intended as a follow-up to Kubrick’s award-winning sci-fi epic2001: A Space Odyssey(1968), was to be an intensive biographical take on the life of the infamous and eccentric French conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite Kubrick’s reputation as a director, the production couldn’t pull together nearly enough funding for the massive scale that was intended for the project at the time, and also another Napoleon-centric film calledWaterloohad recently bombed at the box office, leaving little justification for another attempt.
The original “lost script” was in fact a compilation of at least 800 pages that included various notes, photos and the rubric for Kubrick’s screenplay. Adding to the ambitious scale of the production was the plan for 40,000 soldiers that would make up Napoleon’s army, in lieu of special effects that Kubrick infamously disliked putting in any of his films. He had even considered Jack Nicholson, who would later star in his supernatural horror classicThe Shining, for the lead role of Napoleon, with Audrey Hepburn in the role of his wife Josephine.
Whether Spielberg is honoring at least something similar to those initial production demands remains to be seen, but given that his own directing methods that have never shied from large-scale undertakings, and also his penchant for practical effects over CGI, there’s no doubt that his rendition of Kubrick’s vision will be a marvel to behold. With nothing else on his docket at the moment after the debut ofThe Fabelmans(2022), Spielberg is likely giving most of his attention to what will be one of the biggest productions of his career. It will also be curious to see how Ridley Scott’s very similar upcoming film, also titledNapoleon(2023) and starring Joaquin Phoenix, will perform next to Spielberg’s version.
