Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is still short on streaming

Several months after being released in theaters, Ridley Scott’s big hat-wearing epic Napoleon is finally moving to its forever-home on Apple TV+… but there’s a small catch, and that is not a joke about the historical perception of Napoleon Bonaparte being a short man but is, in fact, a commonly used expression. (Though, especially by modern standards, he was apparently relatively short.)

The catch is that this will be the theatrical version, which runs at a diminutive 160 minutes or so, and not Scott’s hopefully deranged director’s cut that runs about 100 minutes longer. That version, which reportedly includes more of Vanessa Kirby’s Joséphine before she meets Napoleon, is still coming to Apple TV+ at a yet-unannounced later date. But still, if you don’t mind sitting down for a short viewing experience about a man with very tall aspirations who hated the idea of anyone looking down on him, the theatrical cut of Napoleon will be available on March 1.

This is all a bit of nice timing for Napoleon, since it’ll be available on streaming just before the Academy Awards later that month, and also this news is coming out just after we learned that Kirby will be playing Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, in Marvel’s new Fantastic Four movie. Sue, of course, famously dates Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (played by Pedro Pascal), a man whose cosmic ray-induced super power involves being able to stretch his body to great lengths… so, you know, he could be a 100 feet tall if he wanted to. Just throwing that out there for no reason. (Though, in real life, Pedro Pascal is only a few inches taller than Napoleon was, which happens to be a totally cool height shared by cool people, including pop culture news writers, so maybe you should all cool it with the short jokes.)