From Le Parisien.fr (France):
The French director, Patrice Chéreau, has announced that his film project “The Monster of Longwood”, which was set to star Al Pacino as Napoleon Bonaparte during his last days in exile on the island of St. Helena, has been cancelled. Talking to journalists at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, he explained: “It's finished, I've scrapped it, it won't be made. I spent a lot of money keeping this project alive and I've lost a lot of money holding onto the rights for my script.” No further details have been released.
The director has spent seven years working on the project, which was to be based on the novel “Betsy and the Emperor”, written by the American author Staton Rabin. The book centres on the relationship between Napoleon and Betsy (Elizabeth Balcombe), the daughter of William Balcombe, an English merchant based on the island.
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