One of the wilder Joaquin Phoenix stories to have emerged recently involved his threatening to leave Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” unless Paul Thomas Anderson was brought in to do rewrites (THR).
This corroborates what many had stated to be Phoenix’s odd behavior towards Scott right before production was set to begin on “Napoleon” in late 2022. Phoenix’s behavior continued throughout the production of “Napoleon.”
In a new interview with Total Film, Scott adds more details to this story. It turns out that Phoenix getting cold feet on the film happened just 10 days before production was set to begin on “Napoleon”
We came in this room I’m in right now [at Scott Free Productions], and we did a huge reorganization of [the “Napoleon” script], about 10 days from shooting. It was a long shift. Because he suddenly comes and says, “I don’t think I can do this.” I said, “What?!” But he’s great. He always does that. I think he does it deliberately to scare the shit out of me, to make sure I’m paying attention.
Last year, Scott told Empire that he rewrote the entire “Napoleon” script based on Phoenix’s relentless notes.
With Joaquin, we can rewrite the goddamn film because he's uncomfortable, and that kind of happened with “Napoleon”. We unpicked the film to help him focus on who Bonaparte was. I had to respect that because what was being said was incredibly constructive. It made it all grow bigger and better.
Contrary to what some might have suspected, I don’t believe that Phoenix had his wish granted and that Paul Thomas Anderson was involved with the ‘Napoleon’ rewrites. There has been no indication of that ever coming to fruition. Whereas I can confirm, via multiple sources, that PTA definitely rewrote Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
A “Director’s Cut” of “Napoleon,” with 48 additional minutes of footage, was released on Apple TV this past week. Scott tells Total Film that he “prefers” that version to the one we saw in theaters. He’s also set to release “Gladiator II” theatrically in November and is currently casting his Bee Gess biopic, set to shoot early next year.