It's been a long road to get Stanley Kubrick's unrealised script Napoleon to screen, probably because it has the albatross around its neck of being the greatest film never made.
The unparalleled auteur set his sights on a biopic of Napolean Bonaparte in 1968, just as he was finishing up his sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. With an extensive paper trail of his research, proposed casting and ambitions in mind, it wasn't picked up by MGM at the time, presumably because the epic budget that would be needed was just too much for them to consider for a historical biopic.
In the years since his death in 1999, multiple directors have vocalised interest in taking on the remains of Napoleon. Now, it looks like one has finally been picked and there's a battle plan in place.
Here's everything we know about Napoleon.
Who is developing Napoleon?
There have been plenty of names attached over the years to Napoleon. First, Baz Luhrman fancied his hand at the script Kubrick left behind, but it never got off the ground. In 2016, it looked like there was finally some movement from HBO, with Cary Fukunaga at the helm with Steven Spielberg producing. For some reason, that partnership also never took off.
But now it has been announced that Spielberg is developing Napoleon as a 7-part limited series for HBO. It makes sense that time had to catch up to the prestige era of television, as Kubrick's original 149-page script would have no doubt given us a four-hour film (not that that's stopping many directors at the moment).
It's not the first time Kubrick's work has serendipitously fallen into the hands of Spielberg. Back in 1999, Kubrick handed over the development of A.I. Artificial Intelligence to Spielberg after working on it for more than four years. He left the project after deciding computer-generated graphics at the time weren't up to snuff for his specific vision, and the film ended up being released in 2001 starring Jude Law and Brendan Gleeson.
Not much is known about how and when this series will take shape, but at least there's finally some movement on it again.
What is Napoleon about?
According to an archive of the research behind Napoleon, Kubrick wanted to film an expansive look at the French commander's life, from his birth in 1769 to his death in 1821. A pretty hefty task, all things considered. Kubrick was voracious with his research into the figure, with mountains of books and annotated notes from researchers he sent across Europe left behind.
Whether or not this newly developed version of Napoleon will stick to Kubrick's vision remains to be seen, as it's often said that the finished product of Kubrick's films rarely matched his initial scripts. Still, the unfinished work has such fan lore surrounding it that true to intention would probably be wise.
