What If...? – MGM / United Artists (Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon)

World-renowned writer-director Stanley Kubrick's planned but cancelled large-scale biographical drama about the life and times of French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte has went down in history as one of the greatest films never made. It was to be his next film after the groundbreaking sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Oydssey, with his planned casting choices including Jack Nicholson in the titular role and Audrey Hepburn as his first wife, the Empress Joséphine. Kubrick conducted extensive research, reading several books — and attempting to watch every other film ever made — about the subject, ultimately compiling one of the most meticulous and comprehensive libraries about Napoleon inside his own home, with the help of assistants. He planned to shoot large portions of the film on location in France, in addition to the use of United Kingdom studios. He also intended to film battle sequences in Romania and even enlisted the support of the Romanian People's Army, with senior army officers committing over 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 cavalrymen to the project. But alas, due to the hugely expensive cost of location shooting, as well as the Western release of the Soviet film series War and Peace and the box office failure of Waterloo, Kubrick's Napoleon was never meant to be. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?"