Long-Lost Stanley Kubrick Film Script Found, Could Be Developed Into Movie 'Burning Secret'

A new Stanley Kubrick film could be developed even after the great director's death. A script titled Burning Secret was found by Nathan Abrams, a film professor at Bangor University in Wales, and it's close enough to completion to be adapted.

The script follows the plot of a book titled Burning Secret, written by Stefan Zweig in 1913. The Vietnamese story follows a man at a spa resort and his quest to seduce a woman there. He uses the woman's 10-year-old son to aid in his seduction.

Abrams spoke of the moment he found the piece. "I couldn't believe it. It's so exciting. It was believed to have been lost," he told The Guardian on Sunday. He found the screenplay while researching and writing his book Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film, which will be released in 2019, according to The Independent.

Abrams believed the script was missing, but not entirely unknown. According to him, Kubrick fans not only knew of the missing script but also thought Kubrick had been working on it, never to fully complete it.

"Kubrick aficionados know he wanted to do it, [but] no one ever thought it was completed. We now have a copy and this proves that he had done a full screenplay," said Abrams.

The discovered script was stamped by MGM in 1965 showing a developmental process, according to The Guardian. MGM may have tossed the script due to a breach of Kubrick's contract. The director was working on Paths of Glory at the time.

Abrams explained the script could have also been turned away because of its provocative nature and how the story involves a child. "The child acts as an unwitting go-between for his mother and her would-be lover, making for a disturbing story with sexuality and child abuse churning beneath its surface," he said.

He compared it to Kubrick's struggles in passing Lolita, another story that pushed the boundaries of child representation in early film.

"In Burning Secret, the main character befriends the son to get to the mother. In Lolita, he marries the mother to get to the daughter. I think that with the 1956 production code, that would be a tricky one to get by. But he managed with Lolita in 1962 – only just."

Kubrick is best known for his films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. He began his artistic career professionally with the release of documentary short Flying Parade in 1951 and continued to work until his death, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Abrams published a book on Kubrick titled Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual in May 2018.