Lost Kubrick screenplay found by Bangor University Professor 'could be made into film’

Professor Nathan Abrams, a professor of film studies at Bangor University, has discovered a 1956 screenplay by American film director Stanley Kubrick which was thought to have been lost. Titled Burning Secret, it was an adaptation of Viennese novelist, Stefan Zweig’s 1913 novella of the same name.

Kubrick masterminded film classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, psycho-thriller The Shining, Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket and his last film Eyes Wide Shut, which was completed just before Kubrick died in 1999.

The 100-page plus screenplay – co-written with novelist Calder Willingham – follows the story a predatory man who befriends a young boy in order to seduce his married mother, but Professor Abrams thinks the film might have been too “risqué” back in the Fifties and that’s the reason the film was shelved.

“For a long time, the script was lost. It was not even known if it was completed,” said Professor Abrams, who has just published a book Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual. “This literally just fell into my lap as I was researching for my next book, Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film, to be published by Oxford University Press next year,” he added.

“From what I have seen, the screenplay looks authentic. Dated October 24, 1956 it bears the stamp of the Script Department of MGM. It was to be produced by James B. Harris, directed by Kubrick and was written by Kubrick and Willingham.”

“It would be fantastic to see this published, maybe with some commentary, and then eventually someone maybe wants to make it. It’s a full screenplay so could be completed by film-makers today.”