Cary Joji Fukunaga’s career has just been taken to the next level by No Time to Die, with the 25th installment in the James Bond franchise having rocketed to over $300 million at the box office in its first ten days in release. While the filmmaker has always been lauded as a distinctive talent, a commercial hit based on a major property is a surefire way to increase your standing and clout in the industry.
Back in 2016, it was revealed that Fukunaga had entered talks to bring Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon to HBO, with the biopic widely regarded as one of the greatest movies that was never made. The notoriously meticulous Kubrick spent decades developing the project, but budgetary concerns saw it consigned to the scrapheap.
In a new interview with Collider, Fukunaga confirmed that not only was he still involved in the series after all this time, but the scripts have been completed.
“I’ve been working on it now for, I wanna say, four or five years, maybe longer. So yeah, I’m definitely involved in that. We’ve got all the scripts of the episodes now and we’re getting ready to see where the next stage is on it. So it’s happening. I’ve spent a lot of time in Kurbrick’s library and at the house at St. Albans with Christiane, his wife, and Jan Harlan, his brother-in-law. It’s pretty awesome to just even be in the presence of Kubrick’s library.”
Steven Spielberg was announced to be producing as far back as 2013, but it’ll be curious to see if Napoleon finally manages to enter production at any point in the near future. Kubrick first signaled his intentions to make the feature film right after 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Ridley Scott has his own spin on the story preparing to shoot with Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role, so the historical figure could end up being the next subject of competing projects.
Published: Oct 12, 2021 04:45 am