APPLE TV+ TO PRODUCE RIDLEY SCOTT’S NAPOLEON EPIC STARRING JOAQUIN PHOENIX
Ever since Stanley Kubrick’s unrealized dream biopic, Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous French conqueror and rules, has been a very elusive character for directors. The life of Napoleon Bonaparte is an amazing story of revolutionary ideals crushed by the seductiveness of power and his ultimate demise is a story that is one of the best known in history. Kubrick would have been able to make an epic but he never got to it during his lifetime and now, legendary director Sir Ridley Scott has signed a deal with Apple to direct and produce Kitbag, a biopic based on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The upcoming project was first offered to 20th Century Fox, but the deal never went through and soon, Apple signed a deal with Scott’s team to finance and produce Kitbag, which is set to begin production in early 2022 in the United Kingdom.
Kitbag is going to be filmed off of a script written by David Scarpa and while we still don’t know many details about the movie itself, we do know that the Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) is going to play the titular role. As per Scarpa, the movie is going to explore Napoleon’s public and private life, including his rise and fall, as well as his sometimes toxic relationship with his first wife, Josephine, the only true love of his life.
Phoenix is certainly a good pick for the role of Napoleon, as he has proven himself capable of doing any role, no matter how complex and layered it is, but he also looks a little bit like the French emperor and conqueror. This won’t be the first time Phoenix is going to play a ruler, as he played Roman emperor Commodus in the Gladiator (2000), a historical epic directed by none other than Ridley Scott.
As far as Scott is concerned, he is certainly among the few contemporary directors able to carry out such an ambitious plan and direct a historical epic that is certainly going to go down in history as one of the best. Ridley Scott’s opus includes such hits as Alien, Blade Runner, Kingdom of Heaven, and Gladiator, all of which are frequently quoted as being the best movies in history. At this very moment, Ridley Scott is working on Gucci for MGM, a movie featuring Lady Gaga in the role of murderess Patrizia Reggiani, alongside the likes of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Adam Driver, Jared Leto and Jeremy Irons. After Gucci, Scott is set to being production on Kitbag.
The movie’s title, as we know, stems from the phrase “There’s a general’s staff hidden in every soldier’s kitbag”, which perfectly describes Napoleon’s military career in France after the revolutionary events of 1789.
It was reported that the deal for Kitbag was somewhere in the lines of the deal that Apple made last fall when it acquired the rights to Emancipation, the Antoine Fuqua-directed thriller starring Will Smith. Along with them, Apple has also acquired the war film Greyhound starring Tom Hanks, as well as the heavily anticipated adaptation of Eric Roth’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which will see Leonardo Dicaprio star alongside Robert De Niro.
Apple has been in the production business long before the Apple TV+ service launched in 2019. Along with movies and shows made by other production houses, Apple TV+ also offers a variety of original programming, with the current roster including such TV shows as Defending Jacob, For All Mankind, The Morning Show, Servant, Dickinson, Little America, Ted Lasso, Little Voice, Central Park, and The Snoopy Show, as well as movies like Greyhound, Hala,
The Banker, On the Rocks, Wolfwalkers, Palmer, Cherry, Luck and Spellbound. And while there are many projects that are still just in the planning phase or in pre-production, Apple TV+ definitely has a very strong roster, especially when original programming is concerned, which is why we think that you’ll have more than enough material to enjoy until the big projects, such as Kitbag or Killers of the Flower Moon finally arrive.
As of this moment, we really don’t know much about Kitbag. Ridley Scott is reuniting with Joaquin Phoenix on a very ambitious project and both fans and critics are understandably hyper over this movie. Neither Ridley Scott nor Joaquin Phoenix would take up a project that would restrain their creative ambitions and visions, which is why we are fairly certain that we’re going to have a true epic to feast our eyes upon when it comes around, probably somewhere during late 2022 or 2023. Until then, we’ll just have to wait for new information!