Director Steven Spielberg worked for years on the film adaptation of one of Stanley Kubrick’s lost projects. It is an adaptation of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. in seven parts.
Napoleon is one of the most evocative and never-released projects of American cult director Stanley Kubrick. He passed away in 1999. Already after the great success of the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey In 1968, the director is said to have begun researching for a film adaptation of the life of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Gone since 1927 Napoleon, the movie adapted from Abel Gance as an ambitious example. However, Kubrick was not impressed with this movie. director in the following years 2001 The first start for a script Been completed. This text has been published and is now freely available on the Internet.
The fact that Kubrick has already found filming locations – including in France, the UK and Romania – shows just how strong the project really is. Kubrick would have had the support of the Romanian army. It is said that 40,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 other soldiers on horseback took part in the large-scale battlefield scenes.
In the end, the project succumbed to his own ambition. Costs have skyrocketed. In addition, an Italian-Soviet historical film about Napoleon, Waterloo, ended in commercial failure in 1970. Thus, the plan was shelved. Until Steven Spielberg announced ten years ago, in 2013, that he wanted to start writing a series, in consultation with the Kubrick family. In 2016, he also brought HBO on board.
At the Berlin Film Festival this week, it turns out those plans aren’t left behind. At the press conference for his movie Alfabelman Spielberg has announced that he is developing a seven-part miniseries about Napoleon for HBO with Kubrick’s widow, actress Christiane Kubrick, and her brother Jean Harlan. In 2001, Spielberg had already finished an unfinished project for Stanley Kubrick: the sci-fi thriller AI artificial intelligence.
