An unrealized project can leave behind a screenplay, a treatment, or an interrupted collaboration. These distinctions make it possible to study Kubrick’s work without turning every interest into a film that was ready to shoot.
Three cases that don’t belong in the same category
Burning Secret was an adaptation of Stefan Zweig developed during Kubrick and James B. Harris’s partnership. The identification of a screenplay dated 1956 provides different evidence from an intention recalled years later. The study of Burning Secret distinguishes the literary source, the shared writing, and the production that never took place.
One-Eyed Jacks followed a different path. Kubrick took part in its development with Marlon Brando and Calder Willingham, but left the project before Brando directed it. The 1961 film exists and has identifiable authorship. Kubrick’s collaboration on One-Eyed Jacks doesn’t make its finished images shots filmed by him.
Lunatic at Large is associated with a treatment by Jim Thompson commissioned during the Harris-Kubrick period. Analysis of this material focuses on its provenance and stage of development. Later announcements about possible productions shouldn’t be used to rewrite, in retrospect, what Kubrick did or didn’t do with the text.
How to distinguish an idea from a production
The first level is interest: reading a work or talking about it doesn’t prove that the rights were acquired. A writing commission adds a concrete action, but doesn’t guarantee that filming will happen. A treatment can organize the story without establishing the details of a screenplay. And the existence of that screenplay, in turn, doesn’t prove that performers have been hired or financing secured.
Preparation for Napoleon included casting studies, location scouting, and logistical planning. A.I. Artificial Intelligence left behind research, tests, and writing at different stages of development. Both make it possible to compare levels of progress, but they don’t establish a universal measure: an extensive file and a version with dialogue address different tasks.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence introduces an additional circumstance, because Kubrick’s development work eventually led to a film directed by Spielberg. The continuity of materials must be studied alongside the involvement of the person who made the work. This is not the same relationship as that of a project halted without a later feature film connected to it in that way.What the archive can tell us without promising a lost film
Documents can identify who wrote, what was proposed, and which questions remained open. Their dates help organize collaborations, while letters can show a change in priorities or responsibility. Information should retain the degree of certainty of each item: a catalog hypothesis doesn’t become a contract just because it’s repeated in a list.
Nor does every later work made under the same title carry out a plan by Kubrick. It’s necessary to check which text it uses, who adapted it, and what documented relationship it has to the earlier project. A shared literary source doesn’t make two films the same production, and sharing a title doesn’t automatically transfer directing duties.
This section covers the historical development of the projects, not casting announcements or schedules for new versions. The starting point is always the verifiable status of the work: interest, commission, treatment, screenplay, preparation, or the end of a collaboration.
References: Nathan Abrams, research on Burning Secret presented by Bangor University, July 16, 2018. Stanley Kubrick, interview by Joseph Gelmis (1969). American Film Institute, One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Filippo Ulivieri, “Waiting for a Miracle: A Survey of Stanley Kubrick’s Unrealized Projects,” Cinergie, 12 (2017).
