Steven Spielberg developing Stanley Kubrick`s `Napoleon` for TV

Los Angeles: Steven Spielberg is working on is working with Stanley Kubrick`s family to develop a TV miniseries based on late director`s scrapped screenplay on French emperor Napoleon. The ‘Lincoln’ director previously collaborated with Kubrick on 2001`s `Artificial Intelligence`. The project was conceived by Kubrick in the 1970s and later written and directed by Spielberg, the Hollywood Reporter said. "I`ve been developing a Stanley Kubrick screenplay for a miniseries - not for a motion picture - about the life of Napoleon," Spielberg told French TV network Canal+. Kubrick, regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, directed groundbreaking films like `2001: A Space Odyssey`, `Barry Lyndon`, `Lolita`, `The Shining`, `Dr Strangelove`, `Full Metal Jacket` and `Eyes Wide Shut`. He did extensive research on Napoleon but the film was stalled into pre-production after the studio pulled the plug on it. He sent director-screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who was his assistant at that time, to Isle of Elba, Austerlitz and Waterloo for the research. In 2011, a book `Stanley Kubrick`s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made` was published. The perfectionist director had offered actor Oskar Werner the title role of the French emperor while actress Audrey Hepburn had decline a part in the movie, politely writing, "...Will you please think of me again someday?" Kubrick died in 1999 at the age of 70. PTI