Summary
- Steven Spielberg is retooling Stanley Kubrick's unproduced Napoleon movie into a limited series for HBO, marking the second time Spielberg has brought an unmade Kubrick project to fruition.
- Spielberg previously finished Kubrick's A.I. Artificial Intelligence film after Kubrick's death, which was a great success at the box office and even garnered Academy Award nominations.
- Spielberg's previous success with A.I. suggests that his adaptation of Kubrick's Napoleon has the potential to be just as great, given Spielberg's talent and Kubrick's extensive research on the project.
Steven Spielberg is hard at work retooling Stanley Kubrick’s famously unproduced Napoleon movie into a limited series for HBO, and it’s not the first time that Spielberg has revived a Kubrick project. Spielberg has been working for a decade to reimagine Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon Bonaparte biopic as a seven-part miniseries for HBO (via Deadline). The Schindler’s List director has been working with Kubrick’s widow Christiane Kubrick and her brother, Kubrick’s producing partner Jan Harlan, to make sure it’s as close to Kubrick’s original vision as possible. Spielberg’s Napoleon series risks being overshadowed by Ridley Scott’s own Napoleon project starring Joaquin Phoenix, but both projects explore Napoleon’s life from different angles.
Kubrick originally planned to make Napoleon his next project following the blockbuster success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, after Waterloo bombed at the box office and the budget ballooned for Sergei Bondarchuk’s adaptation of War and Peace, the studios went soft on the historical epic genre, and Kubrick’s plans were put on hold. Instead, Kubrick followed up 2001 with the lower-budget A Clockwork Orange, and a lot of his Napoleon work went into Barry Lyndon. Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon biopic remained unproduced for the rest of his life, but Spielberg is finally making that vision a reality, marking the second time Spielberg has brought an unmade Kubrick project to fruition.
Steven Spielberg's Napoleon Show Is His Second Project That Stanley Kubrick Started
Spielberg previously finished a different project that Kubrick started, a film called A.I. Artificial Intelligence. At the time of his death, Kubrick was working on a movie adaptation of the Brian Aldiss short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”. The movie is essentially a retelling of the Pinocchio story with a sentient robot instead of a live puppet. After Kubrick ed away, Spielberg took the baton and carried the project to the finish line. The film was a great success, doing well at the box office and even garnering a couple of Academy Award nominations.
Kubrick’s story treatment for A.I. Artificial Intelligence had been in development for more than 20 years when Spielberg took over the project in 1995. The finished film, released in 2001, is dedicated to Kubrick’s memory. A.I. Artificial Intelligence's popularity even after all the time it took to get the movie made bodes well for Napoleon, which has been in the works for even longer. Kubrick began working on his idea for Napoleon back in the 1960s, meaning that by the time Spielberg's series comes out the project as a whole will have been in development for over 60 years.
A.I. Strongly Suggests Spielberg Bringing Kubrick's Napoleon To Life Will Be Great
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a wonderful movie that combines the profundity of Stanley Kubrick’s storytelling with the warmth of Steven Spielberg’s movies. Spielberg did a great job with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, so there’s a very high bar for future Spielberg/Kubrick projects. Napoleon is in a good place to clear that bar, because Spielberg is one of the greatest living filmmakers and Kubrick put decades of extensive research into the project. There are a lot of things that can go wrong during the production of a TV show, but there’s every reason to expect that Steven Spielberg’s Napoleon show will be just as great as A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Source: Deadline