Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: Berlin Film Festival, HBO, napoleon, spielberg, stanley kubrick, steven spielberg

Steven Spielberg Developing Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon Project For HBO

Iconic Director Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans) announced he will be adapting Stanley Kubrick's script for Napoleon as a 7-part HBO series.

The late iconic film director Stanley Kubrick was a notoriously prickly fellow whom many didn't get along with.  Even one of my professors in film school had a great story about a run-in with him which ended up involving a handgun back in their early filmmaking days of the 1950s together.  But one filmmaker who did adore Kubrick personally was Steven Spielberg.  As he did in 2001 with the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence based on his late friend's plans, Spielberg will again be giving postmortem life to one of Kubrick's projects that he was never able to see to fruition.

Spielberg announced at the Berlin Film Festival that he will be producing Kubrick's planned historical epic about the life of French Military icon Napoleon Bonaparte.  Instead of Kubrick's plan of it being a feature film, Spielberg will be turning Napoleon into a seven-part large-scale series for HBO. "With the co-operation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan, we're mounting a large production for HBO based on Stanley's original script Napoleon."  Spielberg continued, "We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series." Here's a look at a video of Spielberg sharing the news:

Spielberg, who is currently doing the awards circuit for his film The Fabelmans, which is nominated for seven Oscars, including "Best Picture" and "Best Director," didn't specify when we can expect to see Napoleon hit our TV screens.  I think it's safe to say it won't be anytime this year, as if they're truly sticking to Kubrick's original plans for his epic biopic, they'll have their work cut out for them.

Kubrick originally conceived the film in the late 1960s and envisioned a massive production including tens of thousands of extras to recreate famous historic battles that Napoleon had participated in during his life.  As the scale and costs soared, studios rejected the film, relegating it to a never-to-be-realized dream project for the notoriously unwavering filmmaker.  That is, until now.  A.I. was and remains one of Spielberg's most controversial films, but hopefully, combining Kubrick's detailed plans with Spielberg's proven track record of historical epics makes for a special viewing experience.

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