Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made
Forty years of anticipation and how to almost-get an autograph from a cinematic icon.
After the incredible success of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick began working on a large-scale biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte. He spent countless hours digging through manuscripts, reading books and researching the life of the great French emperor, created a meticulous card catalog of the places and doings of Napoleon’s inner circle, and amassed over 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. Then he wrote a preliminary screenplay. But in his obsessive genius, Kubrick envisioned such an epic movie that it was ultimately canceled due to the exorbitant costs of location filming. (Well, that and the fact that two similar historical biopics had failed miserably in the preceding years.) And for 40 years, fans mourned the nonexistence of Kubrick’s Napoleon.
Today, publisher Taschen releases Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made — an equally epic tome about the project that never happened, making Kubrick’s ambitious work on Napoleon available to the world for the first time as 10 books that live inside one giant volume.
There are only 1000 copies of the limited-edition collector’s title, but even with the hefty price tag of $700, we have no doubt die-hard Kubrick fans will be elbowing each other for a copy.
The book is a treasure chest full of Kubrick’s precious archives — his correspondence, research material, costume studies, casting considerations, location scouting photographs, sketches, and even the final draft of the screenplay reproduced in facsimile. (Yes, that’s the closest you’ll ever get to an autograph from Stanley Kubrick.) All of this is tucked inside a cleverly designed carved-out reproduction of a Napoleon history book.
To sweeten the deal, the publisher is offering exclusive access to a searchable online database, featuring Kubrick’s complete picture file of nearly 17,000 Napoleonic images — and they’ve made them all downloadable.
Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made is among the most ambitious publishing projects we’ve seen in a long while, both in terms of the incredible wealth of well-researched content in hosts and the brilliantly conceived vehicle. It offers a rare peek at the creative process of a cultural icon, delivered through a fittingly ambitious prism of book design innovation.
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Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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Napoleon had Russia. Kubrick had Napoleon. RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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Just imagine if it would have been made.. RT @brainpicker Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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Languishing script+years of creative energy=book. RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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Kubrick/Napolean book by Taschen!http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2009/11/17/stanley-kubrick-napoleon/
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RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX WOW….
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RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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RT @brainpicker Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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Light weekend reading—just $700… RT @brainpicker: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon—the greatest movie NEVER made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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The new Napolean complex… Kubrick’s great, uncompleted masterwork in book form. Anyone have a copy I can borrow? http://bit.ly/1uDYGt
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RT @brainpicker Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made | Brain Pickings http://ow.ly/1mIrg5
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@jonronson Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon – the greatest movie never made http://ow.ly/D2EX
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I think I want this as a true fan RT @brainpicker Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made | http://ow.ly/1mIrg5
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Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made | Brain Pickings http://ow.ly/ECQl
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Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made http://bit.ly/71Wfid
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Oh, how great of an epic this would have been! RT @LarisaBelliveau: Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made http://bit.ly/71Wfid
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Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made http://bit.ly/71Wfid
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Kubrick’s Napoleon: the greatest movie never made:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2009/11/17/stanley-kubrick-napoleon/
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[...] takes on the traditional. Recently, we’ve looked at hypertextual books, ambitious carved-out reproductions of history books and Pictorial Webster’s. Today, we look at three inspired [...]
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