Perhaps Stanley Kubrick's most famous "unmade" film, on which he toiled for a number of years but ultimately abandoned due to cost - though he got his period film kick out of his system with Barry Lyndon. The script of it I've read would have made an interesting movie at the least - it doesn't leap off the page as amazing, with far too much narration explaining what's going on, and over long dialogue speeches. also seems to take on too much - it's a greatest hits of Napleon's life, going from military academy as a child through to the French revolution, growing power, becoming Emperor, invading Russia, Waterloo, etc.
It does work as drama - Napoleon was an interesting guy - there are some great visuals you can imagine Kubrick directing the hell out of. (It would cost a fortune.) Like a lot of Kubrick films he's into boobs and sex - plenty of Josephine making love, and Napoleon and even Marie-Louise. I'm not sure it's worth doing in the hands of another director - not without that visual brilliance.
Emotionally the guts of the movie concerns Napoleon and Josephine, Napoleon and Joseph, and Napoleon and the Tsar of Russia. They all talk an awful lot but do interesting things. It would have been better than Barry Lyndon.
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