Make room for Taschen’s new $700 limited edition book “Stanley Kubrick: The Film That Never Was”. For a hefty price tag, readers would be treated to the extensive history behind Kubrick’s failed dream production “Napoleon”.
After the release of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Kubrick spent two years researching extensively for “Napoleon”, creating a screenplay, and preparing for the project’s production which never turned into a reality. Film studios had decided to reject producing Kubrick’s dream film in fear of encountering the same fate as lavish box-office bomb “Waterloo”. The risks involved in creating another Napoleon epic were too great to bank on.
Taschen’s book sheds light on the meticulous preparations undertaken by Kubrick in what could have been a highly remarkable film. He planned to offer a film that features an intimate character study set within a grand period epic. The twenty-two pounder leather bound book is a collection of ten separate volumes.
Each book covers different aspects in Kubrick’s painstaking research for the development of “Napoleon”. Parts highlight on location scouting, production, costumes, Kubrick’s final draft for the script, the complete original treatment, correspondence, Audrey Hepburn’s declining note for the role Josephine, and many more. Readers are also treated with a chance to gain access to a searchable online database containing almost 17,000 images of Napoleon.
Browsing through the in-depth material takes one into Kubrick’s personal journey in attempting to make a film that could have come down as one of the best epic films the industry could have seen. Most would be left wondering what the production could have looked like if it were converted into a reality.
Though painfully rejected, Kubrick didn’t wallow in sorrow and instead went on working with his new project, “A Clockwork Orange”.
