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Baz Luhrmann to Direct Napoleon Miniseries for HBO?

And Now For Something Completely Different

Did I write up this post just so I’d have an excuse to create a Napoleon Blingee for work (instead of just for fun, which is now I’d normally do it?). ….Maybe.

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Earlier this year Steven Spielberg announced that he, in collaboration with HBO, would be making a miniseries version of Stanley Kubrick‘s Napoleon. The notoriously meticulous director spent years compiling research for what would be his great epic, but eventually the studios balked at what would’ve been its rather high price tag.

Except now Spielberg and HBO are bringing it back, and word on the street is that they want Baz Luhrmann—fireworks enthusiast, director of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet—to direct.

It would certainly be… interesting. Luhrmann’s directing style has a very epic feel to it, even if the scope of his films isn’t normally something so grand as the Napoleonic Wars. The only real epic-epic he’s directed is Australia, which was apparently quite the stinker. But the rest of his films, with the possible exception of Strictly Ballroom, have a very grand feel. Speaking personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of The Great Gatsby, which I feel took all the substance of the novel and replaced it with shininess. I’m not sure I could take a whole miniseries’ worth of that.

But it is fun to speculate which modern songs he might include. I can hear it in the background of a scene where Napoleon tries to convince Josephine of the righteousness of his world-conquering cause: “And we’re never be royals (royals).”

(via: Collider)

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