Spielberg to Adapt Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’ Script For HBO Limited Series

This is great news.

For years we’ve been wondering about Stanley Kubrick’s unrealized “Napoleon” screenplay. It’s become one of the mythic lost projects in movie history.

Steven Spielberg has been involved in adapting Kubrick’s screenplay since, at least, 2012, now he says he is “mounting a big production” and the project has become a seven-part HBO limited series.

With the co-operation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan, we’re mounting a large production for HBO on based on Stanley’s original script “Napoleon”. We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series.

Spielberg added that the limited series is very close to being given the green light by HBO head honchos.

Kubrick had originally planned to make the film after “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and did extensive research on the French Revolutionary leader. The shoot was going to take place all over Europe, including France, the UK and Romania with around 40,000 soldiers.

What dismantled the project? Quite simply, the commercial disasters “War and Peace” and, even more so, “Waterloo.”

“No Time to Die” director Cary Fukunaga was originally slated to direct the series, but, thank the cinematic heavens, that never materialized. Fukunaga was never a good fit to helm Kubrick’s “Napoleon.”

Having read the “Napoleon” screenplay many years ago, I do know that the film would have very much benefited in including the artistic style Kubrick was developing back in the late '70s — cold, detached, and relentlessly cynical direction.

The “Napoleon” script always read like it needed the visual sensibilities that Kubrick masterfully brought to "Barry Lyndon.” Then again, if Kubrick had directed “Napoleon” then he wouldn’t have made “Barry Lyndon.”

Now, who will Spielberg hire to direct? My dream choice would be Paul Thomas Anderson. If not PTA then David Fincher 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.