Apple Original Films and Sony’s “Napoleon” is set to open over the Wednesday to Sunday holiday stretch with an estimated gross of $24+ million. The film opens on Thanksgiving eve, November 22nd.
Anthony D’Alessandro for Deadline:
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is of course tracking with older and younger guys, and its 5-day opening is in the range of the helmer’s previous Thanksgiving 2021 launch, House of Gucci, which did $22M over 5-days as well as Prime Video’s Ben Affleck directed title Air which minted $20.2M in a 5-day launch this past Easter.
Napoleon reps Apple’s second mega wide theatrical release on a long window after Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon which Paramount distributed. That pic opened to a solid $23.2M in the middle of an actors strike where performers aren’t permitted to promote struck work. Napoleon begins media previews next Wednesday. The movie starring Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix in the title role has a 2 hour 38 minute running time which is significantly shorter than Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon at 3 1/2 hours.
MacDailyNews Take: Lovers of longer running times fear not: Apple TV+ will stream Ridley Scott’s epic 4-hour director’s cut of Napoleon.
“Napoleon is a man I’ve always been fascinated by,” Scott told Deadline. “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.”
MacDailyNews Take: Vanessa Kirby will win the Academy Award For Best Actress for her role as Josephine. One of many major awards that Ridley Scott’s Napoleon will land.
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With the huge difference in run-times for theatrical and director’s cut (largely an expansion of Josephine’s background), does Apple expect AppleTV+ viewers to still go to theaters to watch the movie as an ‘overview’ of what they’ll see if they streamed the movie?
It’s more about the film only being eligible for cinematic awards and recognition… if it has a theatrical release.
I thought they did away with the rule discriminating against streamed content when judging for those awards recently.