Throughout his career, Ridley Scott has directed epic historical dramas like Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and most recently, The Last Duel. And by the end of the year, the legendary filmmaker will add yet another movie to that list with Napoleon, the highly anticipated biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix as the notorious French general and emperor.
The movie, which was once titled Kitbag, is something that has been long in the works by the Gladiator collaborators, and will be in theaters in the very near future. While we wait for the fall 2023 release of a movie that will surely be something you can’t miss on the big screen, now’s a good time to take a look at everything we know about Napoleon, including its release date, cast, and details on its story, scope, and scale.
What Is The Napoleon Release Date?
The final two months of 2023 will see some of the biggest movies of the year, and Napoleon will be one of them when Ridley Scott’s historical drama opens in theaters on November 22. This has it competing with Disney’s Wish, which also comes out Thanksgiving weekend, and titles coming out earlier in the month like Dune: Part Two, The Marvels, and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Because Napoleon is a co-production of Sony Pictures and Apple, the movie will eventually become available to anyone with an Apple TV+ subscription. It has yet to be revealed when the movie will make its streaming debut. Be sure to check back for more updates on when Napoleon will join the list of new and recent movies streaming.
Joaquin Phoenix And Vanessa Kirby Lead The Napoleon Cast
When the film takes to the big screen this Thanksgiving, it will feature a cast headlined by two of the most interesting names in Hollywood, with Joaquin Phoenix taking on the role of the notorious French figure and Vanessa Kirby portraying his wife, Joséphine.
Jodie Comer was initially cast to portray Joséphine in the early stages of the movie’s development, but the actress who worked with Ridley Scott in The Last Duel dropped out in January 2022, allowing Kirby to take on her second high-profile release of 2023 (her first being Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One). Not long after, Deadline confirmed that Tahar Rahim, who is also set to appear in Sony’s Madame Web, had joined the cast as Paul Barras, the Commissioner of the French Army during the French Revolution.
The Napoleon Trailer Teases Epic Battle Sequences, Intense Romance And The Ruler’s Rise
Those who were anxiously waiting to see a snippet of footage from the upcoming Napoleon movie were in for a treat in July 2023, when Sony Pictures released the first trailer from Scott’s biopic. Clocking in at a little more than two-and-a-half minutes, the stunning trailer touched upon several of the pivotal moments in the general-turned-emperor’s life and reign. Have a look:
With scenes teasing the tumultuous relationship shared by Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Joséphine, the leader’s unprecedented rise to power following the French Revolution, and some of those epic battle sequences, there’s a lot going on and a lot to digest. However, this is just a tease, especially when it comes to a certain battle scene featured in the trailer.
Napoleon Follows The French Military Leader And Emperor On His Rise To Power And Volatile Relationship With Empress Joséphine
By the description provided by Apple, Napoleon will be a sprawling epic that won’t focus on just one part of the leader’s life, but instead various points in his rise to power and control of the French state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The swift and ruthless climb from military leader to emperor will be told alongside Napoleon’s tumultuous relationship with wife, Empress Joséphine, one that can be described as addictive and volatile in nature.
Joaquin Phoenix And Vanessa Kirby Had An Agreement To Go To ‘Dark Places Together’
Based on the movie’s first trailer and everything else we’ve heard about the movie, it appears as if the relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Empress Joséphine, is going to be one of the major dynamics of the upcoming biopic. Phoenix has long been seen as an actor who’ll push himself to great lengths to get the best possible performance out of himself (his Joker role convinced Ridley Scott he was perfect), and judging by comments his co-star Vanessa Kirby made during an Empire Magazine interview, she was also willing to take herself to “dark places” in her depiction of his wife:
It’s the greatest thing when you have a creative partner and you say, ‘Right, everything’s safe. I’m with you. And we’re gonna go to the dark places together.’
As Phoenix pointed out later in the interview, he and his co-star didn’t really put any limitations on each other when it came to depicting the couple’s historically chaotic relationship:
She said, ‘Look, whatever you feel, you can do.’ I said, ‘Same thing with you.’ She said, ‘You can slap me, you can grab me, you can pull me, you can kiss me, whatever it is.’ So we had this agreement that we were going to surprise each other and try and create moments that weren’t there, because both of us wanted to avoid the cliché of the period drama. And by that I mean moments that are well-orchestrated and designed.
This isn’t Phoenix’s only upcoming film centering on the bond between two larger-than-life characters, as he’ll share the screen with Lady Gaga in Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, which is featured on the later part of the 2024 movie schedule.
Ridley Scott Developed The Project With All The Money In The World Collaborator David Scarpa
When Napoleon was first announced back in 2020, Deadline reported that Ridley Scott would be directing the historical epic written by David Scarpa, who previously worked with the filmmaker on the 2017 crime thriller, All the Money in the World.
Outside of his work with Scott on that movie, Scarpa has served as a writer for movies like The Last Castle and the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, as well as a few episodes of the Amazon original series The Man in the High Castle back in 2019.
Scott and Scarpa are also working together on the upcoming Gladiator 2, which has a cast featuring the likes of Pedro Pascal, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Denzel Washington, per Variety.
Napoleon Will Feature Six Major Battle Sequences, Including One On A Frozen Body Of Water
A historical epic about Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power, and his military might, can’t have just one or two battle sequences, and luckily we won’t have that problem when the movie opens this November. When speaking with Deadline in late 2021, Scott revealed that there will be a total of six battle sequences, which could lead to a lot of epic moments.
Sony debuted one of those scenes during CinemaCon 2023, a sequence CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell described on Twitter as “exquisite”:
Sir Ridley Scott shot an exquisite battle sequence on a frozen body of water for #Napoleon, that showcased loads of hand-to-hand army combat, leading to cannonballs ripping through the ice and plunging soldiers into the depths. Epic hardly captures it.
Others in attendance during the Napoleon first-look were also high on the sequence shown, with some drawing attention to the cost of the sequence, and others saying it’s proof that Scott is still at the top of his game.
Joaquin Phoenix’s Unconventional Approach To Acting Led To Changes In The Napoleon Script
Over the course of the past decade-and-a-half, Joaquin Phoenix has established himself as one of the most dynamic and thoughtful actors in show business, as well as one who brings a lot to the table from a creative standpoint. That was the case with Napoleon, as Phoenix’s approach to acting and character study led to changes in the script, as Scott told Empire Magazine:
Joaquin is about as far from conventional as you can get. Not deliberately, but out of intuition. That’s what makes him tick. If something bothers him, he’ll let you know. He made [Napoleon] special by constantly questioning. … With Joaquin, we can rewrite the goddamn film because he’s uncomfortable. And that kind of happened with Napoleon. We unpicked the film to help him focus on who Bonaparte was. I had to respect that, because what was being said was incredibly constructive. It made it all grow bigger and better.
Phoenix has always been an actor with blunt takes on roles, and is very selective with the projects he undertakes, so it’s not all that surprising to read he was instrumental in retooling Napoleon.
Ridley Scott Has Said He’s Always Been Fascinated By Napoleon
Napoleon is one of those historical figures remembered for the good, the bad, and the in-between, which could be why his legacy is talked about so much even a couple of centuries after his rule. Here's what Scott had to say about him during a 2021 chat with Deadline:
Napoleon is a man I’ve always been fascinated by. He came out of nowhere to rule everything — but all the while he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife Josephine. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process.
In the same interview, Scott also stated that there was no other actor who could embody Napoleon like Phoenix, pointing out how the Academy Award-winning actor created one of “movie history’s most complex” emperors in Gladiator.
Steven Spielberg Is Also Working On A Project Based On The Life And Legacy Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Scott isn’t the only acclaimed director working on a Napoleon project, as Steven Spielberg is putting together a seven-part HBO limited series based on Stanley Kubrick’s unrealized biopic, according to Deadline. When speaking at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2023, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker said he was “mounting a large production” based on Kubrick’s original script, a vision that would have seen as many as 40,000 soldiers in battle sequences if it had come to fruition following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Spielberg has been involved with the project since at least 2013, when it was announced that he would be adapting his second Kubrick project, the first being 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which he took over from the filmmaker just a few years before his 1999 death.
Expect to hear more about Napoleon as we get closer to its November release. In the meantime, don’t forget to take a look at our 2023 movie schedule to see when other high profile releases will be coming to a theater near you.
