An epic feature film about Napoleon Bonaparte, the notorious French ruler who conquered Egypt, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, and Spain, will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ the day before Thanksgiving.
Napoleon marks a reunion between heralded filmmaker Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix for the first time since making their award-winning film, Gladiator, over two decades ago. On Monday, Sony Pictures released the first official movie trailer, complete with bone-chilling scenes of the ruthless 5’6″ military commander during his rise in The French Revolution. The preview also depicts Napoleon overseeing the infamous incident where his soldiers shot the pyramids and the nose off of the Sphinx in 1798–although the accuracy of that particular occurrence remains highly contested among historians to this day. In less than 24 hours, the commercial advertisement for the historical drama garnered over 6 million views on Facebook, 2 million views on Instagram, and 1 million views on YouTube.
During his 15-year reign as the de facto leader of the French Republic, Napoleon strategized his country’s military tactics in approximately 15 wars. After establishing the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, Saint-Domingue (which later became known as Haiti), Napoleon’s military was defeated by an uprising of enslaved inhabitants led by Toussaint Louverture during the early 1800s, right around the same time that he sold the Lousiana Territory (present-day Lousiana, Texas, Kansas Wyoming, Arkansas, Montana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, parts of Colorado, Minnesota, and New Mexico,) to the United States government.