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Ridley Scott's Next Movie Kitbag Will Have 6 Major Battle Sequences
Director Ridley Scott says that his new Napoleon Bonaparte movie, Kitbag, will feature no less than six battle sequences. Kitbag stars Joaquin Phoenix as Bonaparte, the famous French military leader who led and served in multiple military campaigns throughout his life, some of which were the bloodiest in all of history. The Last Duel's Jodie Comer will star alongside Phoenix as Joséphine Bonaparte, his wife, with Kitbag beginning production in January.
Scott is the director of numerous Hollywood hits, specializing in historical epics, including the Oscar-winning Gladiator with Russell Crowe. The famed director has tackled a number of historical topics throughout his career, from Kingdom of Heaven to 1492: Conquest of Paradise to Exodus: Gods and Kings, and beyond. Scott's prolific nature has allowed him to create a massive body of work in the genre, encompassing a scope rarely captured by his filmmaking peers, with his next endeavor sounding even more ambitious.
Talking to Deadline, Scott revealed that Kitbag will have no less than six major battle sequences, which is pared down from the actual Napoleon's 61 battles throughout his life. Scott says the film has more than 150 speaking parts and will be filmed at multiple locations, which is par for the course on his usual historical epics. Scott went on to discuss his reasoning behind tackling the story of Napoleon, which seems to stem largely from the desire to work with Phoenix and to tell the complex story of the relationship with his wife, as well as his historical battles. Here's what he had to say:
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I came in saying the sell for me was, I want to do Napoleon and I want to have Joaquin Phoenix, and I just spoke with Jodie Comer and I want her to be Josephine [Bonaparte] and the story is fundamentally locked into the need that these two had for each other and there's a story in that. On top of that, there's also his entire career-he did 61 battles. I'm trying to tell the story where we see six important battles.
When asked about his desire to make the big, sweeping epic films that have been so prominent in his career, Scott said that he has a fascination with it, particularly as people rarely learn from it, in his opinion, saying, "I've got a fascination with the beauty of history and the beauty of architecture, the beauty of costumes and, y'know, history constantly repeats itself cause we don't learn shit by history." Scott's most recent historical film, The Last Duel, written by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Nicole Holofcener, was a commercial flop, but was well-received critically.
At 84 years old, Scott is still one of the most prolific filmmakers working today, having made nine feature films within the last decade, while producing six times that amount via his Scott Free banner for both film and television. Without question, Scott is an icon of the industry who represents decades of Hollywood's most compelling, entertaining, and epic films with no signs of slowing down. Kitbag and a sequel to Gladiator are next on the list for the director.
