Vanessa Kirby will replace Jodie Comer, who exited over scheduling, as Empress Josephine in Ridley Scott’s “Kitbag,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon. The historical drama for Apple TV+ is slated to begin shooting this spring.
“Napoleon is a man I’ve always been fascinated by,” Scott told Deadline last January. “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.”
Her reps are negotiating a deal for Kirby, who is coming off an Oscar nomination for her gut-wrenching performance in Pieces of a Woman.
Scripted by Scott’s All the Money in the World collaborator David Scarpa, Kitbag explores Bonaparte’s origins and his swift, told through the lens of his addictive and often volatile relationship with the Empress. Scott and Kevin Walsh are producing for Scott Free.
Kirby earned her first Oscar nomination just this year for her turn as Martha, a Boston woman struggling to endure the loss of a child, in Pieces of a Woman, starring in the Kornél Mundruczó Netflix film alongside Shia LaBeouf and Ellen Burstyn.
MacDailyNews Take: Given Kirby’s exemplary performance in The Crown, we expect her Josephine to be sublime.
Ridley Scott. Bill Murray. Tom Hanks. Robert De Niro. Leonardo DiCaprio. Will Smith. Joaquin Phoenix. And on and on and on!
Apple TV+ is becoming an awards-magnet thanks to its laser-like focus on high-quality, big-name productions.
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love Vanessa Kirby. but I also love Jodie Comer.
so I am deeply conflicted how to feel about this.
“Apple TV+ is becoming an awards-magnet thanks to its laser-like focus on high-quality, big-name productions”
No doubt Apple is landing the big names, impressively so. They must be putting some big money into AppleTV+. But “high quality” is relative. It may have big names, great cinematography and win awards but that doesn’t make it compelling-> entertaining to watch.
Napoleon will be a definite watch for me. Historicals are my go to for reading and TV watching. But, for example, more critics than not probably liked Public Enemies and probably described it as high quality. It starred Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. For anyone who has read about John Dillinger, you would know that his story is about as entertaining/compelling as it gets. Yet somehow they were able to make it high quality yet unentertaining/not compelling.
Napoleon is another example of you’ll have to try fairly hard not to make his story a compelling and entertaining to watch.
Anyone else read “kitbag” as “shitbag”?
Glad to hear of the project. Because this if done correctly/accurately/factually the Haitian people kicked Napoleon’s army’s ass! Black history!