Kubrick's plans for 'Napoleon' to be published
By Nick Holdsworth
Hollywood Reporter, June 25 - July 1, 2002 Issue, Page 12
MOSCOW -- The script and preparation details for Stanley Kubrick's long planned but never filmed
"Napoleon" project are to be released in a book next year, Jan Harlan, the late director's executive
producer, said Monday.
Harlan, who is working on the book with his sister, Kubrick's widow Christiane, said the book,
"Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon - His Greatest Film Never Made," would be a tribute to a project that
obsessed the director, who died in March 1999.
Harlan is at the Moscow International Film Festival this week to present a retrospective of Kubrick
films and his own biographical documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures."
He said Kubrick amassed more than 18,000 books and documents on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte and
7,000 location photographs during his 30-year quest to make a film on the French military leader and emperor.
"From 1969 until his death, Stanley was fascinated by Napoleon," Harlan said. "Although Kubrick
films are very different in form, there is a common denominator - the human folly and vanity built
into our species that appears to be our downfall. Napoleon interested Stanley very much because
here was a man with a huge talent and tremendous charisma who in the end failed only because of
his emotions and vanity. Napoleon was not able to control his emotions - it was his Achilles' heel."
The book will include a copy of the film's script and details of the location scouting carried out in
Romania, France and Britain in the 1970s. Harlan added that he would love to see the film made one day
but said that its scope and sweep, covering Napoleon's entire life, would necessitate a budget of around
$120 million.
"It would be absolutely fantastic if it could be made," Harlan said.
*****