Two Unproduced Screenplays By Stanley Kubrick to Be Made as TV Projects?

I was on a Stanley Kubrick kick a few weeks ago and re-watched a number of his films.  It always struck me that there’s something in Kubrick’s visual style that has never been duplicated by any other director.  When he died in 1999 shortly after completing Eyes Wide Shut, it was a huge blow to the film world — especially since over his decades as one of the most visionary directors of all time he left many never-produced projects, with some (like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which was later directed by Steven Spielberg) which were actually very close to being ready to shoot.

Now, over a dozen years after Kubrick’s death, his son-in-law Philip Hobbs (who co-produced Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket) has negotiated a deal with Entertainment One to bring at least two more of those projects back to life on television under the banner of Philco Films (co-founded by Hobbs and Steve Lanning).  The first, Downslope, is described by Deadline as “an epic Civil War drama following the activities of Confederate Army Colonel John S. Mosby and his plot to settle the score after Custer captures and hangs several of his men.”  The second is titled God Fearing Man and will be adapted as a TV mini-series by Stephen R. Clarke.  That one  “tells the true story of Canadian minister Herbert Emerson Wilson who became one of the best safe-crackers and most successful bank robbers in America in the early 20^th century.”  Both scripts were written by Kubrick in the late 1950s, and he originally wrote the latter with Kirk Douglas in mind in the late 1950s after they filmed Paths of Glory but before they worked on Spartacus.

Curiously, neither of these are based off a novel — and Kubrick from 1956’s The Killing on always based his films off of novels (of course, he would go on to alter most of them dramatically).  As such they are probably more in line with Kubrick’s earlier 1950s films like Killer’s Kiss and Fear and Desire than his later, more acclaimed masterpieces. Kubrick also regularly worked with co-writers, so I’m curious to find out if he collaborated with anyone else on these scripts.

I don’t mind other filmmakers tackling unproduced screenplays of greats who have passed on, but I wonder why these won’t be produced as films.  Kubrick had such a love for film that had he made these projects I doubt they would have been for television.  But hey, I’m not his son-in-law, so what do I know?