Steven Spielberg is preparing a Napoleon series for HBO, adapted from Stanley Kubrick

Steven Spielberg. Stanley Kubrick. HBO. Napoleon. The kind of wedding that makes spectators around the world dream. Well, dream no more, because the former has just announced that it will adapt the Napoleon the second in the form of a series for the HBO channel.

Napoleonthe greatest film ever made

It was during a press conference at the Berlinale that Steven Spielberg unveiled the details of his next project: a seven-episode mini-series adapted from the abandoned film. Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick (2001, a space odyssey, shining) for HBO.

The director of Jurassic Park And IndianaJones thus declared that he was in the process of “to set up a big production” for the North American channel. This mini-series will be produced by Spielberg himself, in cooperation with Christiane Kubrick, the director’s widow, and Jan Harlan (Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut).

• Watch Steven Spielberg’s statement:

This adaptation of Napoleon has been in the director’s sights for many years and was originally planned as a feature film. As a reminder, Steven Spielberg directed AI Artificial Intelligence in 2001, already an unfinished project of Kubrick after Eyes Wide Shut. Unfortunately, the filmmaker died in 1999 before seeing it succeed.

Napoleon is arguably one of the most famous abandoned movies in movie history. Planned after 2001, a space odyssey (1968), the feature film was to be a highly documented account of the Emperor’s life. Alas, the project had been deemed too expensive and ambitious by the studios. Stanley Kubrick then envisaged filming in several countries around the world and sequences with more than 40,000 extras. The filmmaker even convinced actor Jack Nicholson (Flight over a cuckoo’s nest, shining, Chinatown) to play the main role.

For his NapoleonStanley Kubrick had amassed over 800 pages of notes, documents, photos and research, which eventually formed the subject of a book published by Taschen.

This HBO series Napoleon by Steven Spielberg is still fully in pre-production and shouldn’t see the light of day for a while. But the project seems to be on the right track and Digital will of course keep you informed.