French Historians Slam Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’ Inaccuracies: ‘Like Spitting in the Face of French People’
variety.comElsa Keslassy International Correspondent Ridley Scott‘s “Napoleon” is a movie that French people love to hate. But despite harsh criticism in France, the historical epic smashed the box office and grossed over $9.76 million from 1.15 million tickets sold in its first two weeks in theaters.
Ironically, “Napoleon” got the lowest score of all of Scott’s recent movies on Allociné, the local equivalent of IMDb, with 2.3 stars out of 5 from 4,659 users’ reviews, yet it’s one of Scott’s biggest hits in France. “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, a Corsica-born officer who became Emperor of France, and Vanessa Kirby as his wife as Joséphine de Beauharnais, world premiered in Paris on Nov.
14, a few days after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Scott’s last two movies, “The Last Duel” and “House of Gucci,” were warmly reviewed in France, and yet they sold only 425,000 and 800,000 tickets respectively during their releases there.
But “Napoleon” isn’t totally bulletproof, says Comscore France’s Eric Marti. Released by Sony, the Apple production “debuted with a bang in France but lost 50% in its second week, which is a sign of a bad word-of-mouth,” says Marti, predicting that it will probably sell between 1.6 and 1.8 million tickets in France, on par with Scott’s 2012 movie “Prometheus.” It will still be one of his biggest successes in France — over the last 10 years the only Scott movie that performed better is “The Martian,” with 2.5 million tickets sold.
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