Stanley Kubrick Predicted Ridley Scott’s Napoleon Failure 54 Years Ago

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon failed to meet expectations either critically or commercially, but the movie’s performance was foreseen by legendary director Stanley Kubrick long before its release. Made on an estimated budget of $130-200 million, Napoleon made just $220 million at the global box office and scored a middling 58% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, highlighting its mixed reception. However, while the film itself had problems, its overall performance was predicted long before production began.

Despite being one of the most compelling figures in modern history, Napoleon biopics have always proved problematic. Perhaps the most successful is Abel Gance’s 1927 silent film which, while regarded as a classic, runs over five hours long – providing an unrealistic template for future success. Likewise, other films set in the era, such as Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, have either been equally unwieldy or failed to make a box office impact. This record led Kubrick to make his indirect Napoleon prediction – a prognosis that seems increasingly accurate in hindsight.

Stanley Kubrick Canceled His Own Napoleon Movie

Although it would have been impossible for him to pass judgment on Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, given his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick nonetheless indicated the film would fail by canceling his own planned Napoleon movie in 1970. The movie, which is widely regarded as one of the great “what-ifs” of cinema, would have been an epic account of the emperor’s life, rivaling even Gance’s version in scope and scale. According to the BBC, Kubrick planned on using “a maximum of 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry” from the Romanian army to recreate Napoleonic campaigns, making it one of the most ambitious films ever.

Despite the project’s exciting scale, however, Kubrick’s Napoleon was never realized. Kubrick’s collaborator and brother-in-law Jan Harlan revealed that studio MGM were unwilling to proceed along Kubrick’s plans, while Kubrick himself eventually accepted that “…he could not do justice to his vision or his thoroughness unless he had much more screen-time and a bigger budget.” Coupled with the financial failure of Bondarchuk’s 1970 Waterloo movie, it was clear that Kubrick began to understand that Napoleon was ill-suited to cinema. His abandonment of the project, long before Scott’s attempt, suggests he ultimately knew any movie about the emperor would struggle.

What Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon Movie Would Have Been Like

Even though Kubrick’s Napoleon movie never saw the light of day, the extent to which the notoriously meticulous director drew up plans and assembled his research provides a clear indication of what his project might have looked like. Per the BBC report from 2019:

“…it’s clear that the biopic wouldn’t have confined itself to one part of Napoleon’s life, following him instead from his birth in Corsica in 1769 to his death on the remote island of Saint Helena in 1821. Its emphasis would be on the battles Kubrick called ‘vast lethal ballets’, as well as on Napoleon’s love for Josephine, ‘one of the great obsessional passions of all time’.

In this regard, the movie sounds not dissimilar from Scott’s 2023 version. However, while Scott’s film felt compelled to cram Bonaparte’s life into a little over two-and-a-half hours, it seems Kubrick intended his Napoleon to play out over a much slower pace – drastically affecting the running time. As Adrienne Groen, co-curator of the Design Museum’s Kubrick exhibition, told the BBC, the movie would have combined “the slow pace of Barry Lyndon, the attention to detail of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the massed battlefields of Spartacus.” Without any actual footage, this description at least provides a flavor of Kubrick’s vision.

Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon Wasn’t Completely Wasted

It would be easy to assume that Kubrick’s abandonment of Napoleon meant forsaking all his work on the epic historical movie. However, while his Bonaparte biopic never came to fruition, the director’s research wasn’t totally wasted. According to the BBC, Kubrick’s 1975 feature Barry Lyndon, set during the mid-18th century, “incorporated some of Kubrick’s Napoleon research, and many of his innovative ideas about period dramas.” Kubrick’s knowledge of the period accrued during his Napoleon research was instrumental in making the movie as realistic and evocative as possible.

Beyond Kubrick’s own projects, however, the legacy of his Napoleon lives on in Steven Spielberg’s planned HBO series on the subject. Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival in 2023 (via Deadline), Spielberg declared:

“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 Napoloeon. We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series.”

The idea of Spielberg working on a Napoleon project would be exciting in and of itself, but the fact that the series will be explicitly based on Kubrick’s original concept means that there’s still a chance the director’s plans will be put into action. In fact, Jan Harlan told the BBC in 2019 that “TV now is technically superb, and a series of many hours and chapters is the ideal format for Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon,” indicating that the HBO project may actually be preferable to a cinematic release. Although it will not be what Kubrick intended, Spielberg’s HBO series will undoubtedly come close to realizing his dream.

Kubrick’s Napoleon Proves The Sad Truth Of Scott’s Movie

Ultimately, whatever happens with Spielberg’s revival on HBO, Kubrick’s abandoned Napoleon acts as a tragic precursor to Scott’s film. While Scott is a great filmmaker in his own right, the fact that a man of Kubrick’s singular commitment, ambition, and determination couldn’t find a way to get it done suggests that any project about the legendary emperor is incredibly difficult to pull off. This is not to say that Scott’s film was always impossible. It does suggest, however, that its success was always uncertain.

A further factor to consider is how concern around Kubrick’s movie was indicative of the reaction that has met most Napoleon films – including Scott’s. Similar projects like Waterloo, Master and Commander, the 1956 War and Peace, and many others all underperformed at the box office, perhaps suggesting that whatever a project’s merits, there is just not sufficient audience interest to justify the expense of a full-scale Napoleon biopic. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon may have been flawed, but Kubrick’s cancelation suggests even a masterpiece may have struggled to match expectations.

Sources: BBC Culture, Deadline