The masterpiece that never was: Kubrick's Napoleon
 

Spartacus. Lolita. Dr. Strangelove. 2001. Cloockwork Orange. The Shining. Full Metal Jacket.

And Napoleon.

After completing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, director and visionary Stanley Kubrick planned a large-scale biography on Napoleon Bonaparte. He studied carefully, spoke to experts, planned shooting and even wrote an entire script for the project. Kubrick was even quoted saying it will be the "best movie ever made." Ultimately, the project was scrapped due to exhorbitant costs and the commercial failure of Sergei Bondarchuk's movie Waterloo. Even after this, however, Kubrick continued to develop the project.

The script for this supposed masterwork is now available online here (Google Docs). I've been reading it all afternoon and it's incredible. If you're a fan of epic movies or history, I welcome you to enjoy this.

how does it compare to War and Peace?

yay stanley kubrick!

here is an enormous batch of links concerning things stanley:

Coudal Partners

here's a review of rob sharp's taschen book about the non-film project:

Stanley Kubrick - A dream movie revisited - Features, Films - The Independent

there's maybe other stuff amongst this heap of links.

The novel or one of the movies? I've only seen the 1956 version with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Compared to that, it would have likely stood up well, depending on the casting. It probably would have been longer.