A “lost” script by revered filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been discovered — and the flick could be shot for the big screen, according to a new report.
A Wales film professor says he unearthed the 1956 screenplay for “Burning Secret” — an adaptation of a 1913 novella by author Stefan Zweig — while researching a book about the making of “Eyes Wide Shut,” the final film by Kubrick, who died shortly after its completion in 1999.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Bangor University professor and Kubrick expert Nathan Abrams told The Guardian. “It’s so exciting. It was believed to have been lost.”
The screenplay has MGM Studios’ script department stamp and was largely completed by Kubrick and novelist Calder Willingham in 1956, but never produced, according to The Guardian.
“Kubrick aficionados know he wanted to do it, [but] no one ever thought it was completed,” Abrams told The Guardian. “We now have a copy and this proves that he had done a full screenplay.”
The studio may have shelved the project because Kubrick was also helming another film for the MGM, “Paths of Glory,” and because of its risque subject matter, the report said.
“Burning Secret” tells the story of a predatory man who befriends a 10-year-old boy as a means of seducing the child’s married mother.
The screenplay — totaling more than 100 typewritten pages — is owned by the son of a one-time Kubrick collaborator, but Abrams would like to see the director’s vision shared with the world.
“It’s a full screenplay, so [it] could be completed by filmmakers today,” he told The Guardian.
