Steven Spielberg to Flip Kubrick’s Unmade Napoleon Into TV Collection

After about half a century within the movie enterprise, Steven Spielberg lastly made his film musical, together with his remake of West Facet Story, and informed his personal life story in The Fabelmans. So how do you high that? How about by lastly making of the best unmade movies in historical past right into a actuality?

Talking on the Berlin Movie Competition this week, Spielberg confirmed that he’s prepping a “giant manufacturing” based mostly on Stanley Kubrick’s unfilmed screenplay for a Napoleon movie. Fairly than a film, although, Spielberg’s model — which is being made with the cooperation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan — will probably be a “seven-part restricted collection.”

Kubrick’s profession was affected by initiatives he researched for years however by no means truly mounted, however his Napoleon would be the most well-known. Kubrick initially tried a Napoleon movie within the years after 2001: A House Odyssey, however the venture by no means got here collectively. (He finally utilized a few of the analysis he’d achieved to the making of Barry Lyndon, which was set round roughly the identical interval in historical past.)

Spielberg had revealed his curiosity in making Kubrick’s Napoleon earlier than, but it surely now looks as if a a lot firmer actuality. He has clearly labored from Kubrick’s uncooked supplies earlier than, having directed A.I. Synthetic Intelligence after Kubrick handed away with out ever turning that script right into a actuality. And Spielberg has labored in TV a number of instances earlier than, together with on the acclaimed World Warfare II miniseries Band of Brothers.

If Spielberg and HBO get Napoleon off the bottom comparatively quickly, it should compete with Ridley Scott’s movie about the identical French chief. That model, which stars Joaquin Phoenix within the title function, will probably be launched later this yr via Apple TV+.