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

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 prime that? How about by lastly making of the best unmade movies in historical past right into a actuality?

Talking on the Berlin Movie Pageant this week, Spielberg confirmed that he’s prepping a “massive manufacturing” primarily based on Stanley Kubrick’s unfilmed screenplay for a Napoleon movie. Relatively than a film, although, Spielberg’s model — which is being made with the cooperation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan — shall be a “seven-part restricted sequence.”

Kubrick’s profession was plagued by tasks he researched for years however by no means truly mounted, however his Napoleon often is 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 ultimately utilized a number 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 occasions earlier than, together with on the acclaimed World Conflict II miniseries Band of Brothers.

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