Ridley Scott says His 4-hour Director’s Cut of ‘Napoleon’ to be Released on Apple TV+

In late August we broke the news that Ridley Scott was working on a director’s cut of “Napoleon” that would clock in at around 4.5 hours.

Scott has now elaborated further on it, with more details, in an interview with Total Film. It seems as though it will definitely be made available soon after the film’s November release:

"I’m working on it. It was four [hours] 10 [minutes] this morning. And so what will happen is, we’ll screen [the theatrical cut] first with Sony, and then it has its run, and then the perfect thing is that [the director’s cut] goes to streaming, and we have four hours 10 minutes."

“Napoleon,” being released on November 22nd, has a theatrical runtime of 157 minutes, it’s already been MPA rated so that will likely not change. A 4-hour cut should be interesting to see, but I’m somewhat disappointed it’s not the cut being shown theatrically.

Produced and financed by Apple, Scott’s epic reunites the filmmaker with Joaquin Phoenix as the European conquering emperor. Scott is 85-years-old, but this is one of the most ambitious films of his career. It is said to tackle Napoleon’s world-battling theatrics, not to mention his frosty relationship with wife Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby).

Scott is no stranger to “Director’s Cuts.” We all know about the multiple “Blade Runner” cuts that exist. Further, his Crusades epic, “Kingdom of Heaven,” was originally released in the summer of 2005 to negative reviews which led to Scott adding more than an hour's worth of deleted footage. The result? A 210-minute cut with fully fleshed-out characters, plot holes no longer visible and action sequences which could now breathe and sing in effective fashion.

The tragic part of it all was that this 210-minute cut of ‘Kingdom’ was the version Scott wanted to release all along, but the studio wanted to hear none of it. "Kingdom of Heaven" deserves be known as one of the greatest director's cuts ever released.