HBO had announced back in 2018 that they were producing a version of Stanley Kubrick’s sadly unrealized opus, "Napoleon." Cary Fukunaga was supposed to direct with Steven Spielberg producing. Ever since then? Radio silence.
What exactly is going on with “Napoleon”? The project is still categorized as in development on its IMDB page, but with Fukunaga not even mentioned as the director. And yet, Fukunaga is now telling Collider that it is still very much happening, and that most of the episodes have already been written. Shooting could begin next year.
Fukunaga also states in the interview that he has worked closely, hand-in-hand, with the Kubrick estate "to carry the torch in a way that embodies the spirit of what [Kubrick] was trying to achieve."
I never thought Fukunaga was a good fit for Kubrick’s “Napoleon,” so this news isn’t as exciting as I would have liked it to be. Having read the Napoleon screenplay many years ago, I do know that the film would have very much benefited from having the artistic style Kubrick was developing for himself back in the late '70s — cold, detached, and relentlessly cynical.
The unrealized “Napoleon” screenplay very much read like it needed the visual sensibilities that Kubrick masterfully brought to "Barry Lyndon," but mixed with the subversive edge of "A Clockwork Orange." Better candidates for the job could have been Paul Thomas Anderson or even Christopher Nolan, filmmakers with dark, meticulously obsessive visual styles and the kind of modern-day subversiveness that the screenplay was intended to be delivered with.
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