It's late at night in Paris, early in July -- but as most frenchmen are winding down for their annual summer break, France's newest citizen, Oliver Stone, is maintaining a breakneck pace in the editing room, struggling to ready his $150 million historical epic "Alexander" for a Nov. 5 U.S. release through Warner Bros. Pictures.

This is the final march in a battle Stone has waged for more than a decade, vanquishing competing projects, overcoming budgetary hurdles and conquering logistical concerns including real war.

"I'd say I'm pretty happy we got through it alive," says an exhausted Stone, who spends his days shuttling on the Chunnel train between Paris and London. "We're halfway through the hard-editing process, right in the middle, and everything is coming together," he adds, sounding satisfied -- and relieved.

"Alexander," the most expensive film made to date by the Academy Award-winning writer-helmsman -- who crafted his oeuvre with such films as 1986's "Platoon," 1987's "Wall Street" and 1991's "JFK" -- also has been the most challenging. It involved a cast and crew of 300, shooting on three continents and monetary backing that prompted one source to call it "a case study in film finance," what with its large number of foreign presales coupled with German equity funds and sale-and-leaseback incentives.

Stone's production saga began 15 years ago when he conceived of making a film about Alexander the Great, a Macedonian general who conquered the known world by age 25, circa 356-320 B.C. Around 1990, Stone commissioned a writer to pen a novel about the enigmatic early master of the universe; many ideas were put to paper, but the book never saw the light of publication.

Stone moved on to other projects but admits that the story continued to tug at him. Look closely at his 1991 film "The Doors," and one can see lead actor Val Kilmer, as rock god Jim Morrison, morphing into Alexander. "I have always been fascinated by the character, but he has always been very resistant to dramatization," Stone says.

Stone attempted to revive the project in 1996, joining forces with independent film kingpins Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar; again, though, it floundered. Not until 2000, when Ridley Scott's best picture Oscar winner "Gladiator" proved that sword-and-sandal epics again were viable as blockbusters, did industry interest in the Alexander character reach a tipping point.

By 2001, Warners had teamed with the Canton Co. and Senator Films on an Alexander project scripted by Christopher McQuarrie (1995's "The Usual Suspects"), with Matthew McConaughey earmarked to star. Martin Scorsese eventually threw his lot in with the studio, bringing along Leonardo DiCaprio (star of Scorsese's 2002 drama "Gangs of New York") and financier Initial Entertainment.

Meanwhile, producer Dino De Laurentiis leaped to option a trio of Alexander novels by Valerio Manfredi and, with the backing of Universal, secured Oscar winner Ted Tally (1991's "The Silence of the Lambs") to craft a script reserved initially for Scott and later for Australian director Baz Luhrmann (2001's "Moulin Rouge"), who reportedly planned to film the epic on his native continent.

Even Mel Gibson entered the Alexander sweepstakes, announcing that his Icon Prods. would make a 10-part series for HBO based on the life of the iconic warrior.

But Stone was not about to let his dream project slip away. He had an open invitation to make a film for indie mogul Moritz Borman and decided that this was the time to call in the chit.

"I've been very friendly with Oliver for the last 20 years," Borman says, noting that in February 2000, he told the iconoclastic filmmaker, "'I don't care what you do, but I want you to give me a screenplay and a budget and some commitment you will do a film for us.' I was hoping he would come with a small, little thing; a couple of weeks later, he said he thought it was now time to do 'Alexander.'"

Christopher Kyle (2002's "K-19: The Widowmaker") turned in several screenplay drafts during the next year after being hired by Intermedia, but Stone eventually would take scripting chores upon himself, writing and rewriting throughout 2002 as Borman worked on the financing.

"He became very much involved in developing a screenplay that would be as historically accurate as possible, and we all know that there is very little account of Alexander during his time," Borman says of Stone's dedication. "Most of the stuff was written much later."

As for that financing, preliminary estimates were daunting, much higher than the $150 million-$160 million "Alexander" eventually would cost. A decision to limit most of the film's location work to Morocco helped to keep the budget in line with early projections, and Stone capitalized on the fact that his mother is a French national, becoming a French citizen in order to access European production funds and sale-and-leaseback breaks in the United Kingdom. Such incentives accounted for 10%-15% of "Alexander's" budget, Borman estimates.

"No independent company normally does these films (without) a studio affiliation," Borman says. "The real wonder of getting this done was the clear independent spirit, with all the independent elements coming together."

When Warners agreed in late-fall 2002 to release "Alexander" domestically, its financing truly fell into place: France's Pathe soon signed on as an equity investor then was joined by Egmont and German fund IMF3 (Intermedia's principal backer). Stone then completed his script by February 2003, helping to propel a bevy of presales three months later at the Festival de Cannes, including pacts with Germany's Constantin, Scandinavia's Nordisk and Spain's Tri Pictures.

"It was a very difficult production to put together," Stone says. "It was a true international co-production involving several countries; it was done piece by piece, where people kept coming in. You are making that kind of movie against long odds."

Investors and territorial buyers had banked the subject matter, Stone's cachet and Intermedia's track record. Colin Farrell had signed to star as the title character, but the Irish actor famous for his "laddishness" was relatively unknown, his roles in the 2003 releases "S.W.A.T." and "Daredevil" still ahead.

Nonetheless, the buzz Farrell had generated with starring turns in the 2000 war drama "Tigerland" and the 2002 thriller "Phone Booth," both helmed by Joel Schumacher, was enough to land him a reported $7 million payday.

With Borman handling the financing -- abetted by Stone's CAA representatives (led by Bryan Lourd) and U.K.-based entertainment attorney Tim Johnson -- the filmmaker threw himself into preproduction, readying the project for a September start date and assembling his cast.

Aside from Farrell, "Alexander" stars Jared Leto as battlemate Hephaestion, Rosario Dawson as Alexander's wife Roxanne, Anthony Hopkins as Gen. Ptolemy and Angelina Jolie and Kilmer as Alexander's parents, Queen Olympias and King Philip.

Stone's seemingly unstoppable momentum seemed to have a chilling effect on the other Alexander projects: Gibson abandoned his HBO initiative; Scorsese dropped out of the Warners project, which merged with that of Universal and landed DiCaprio's support; and while Luhrmann and De Laurentiis continued to reiterate publicly their intent to lens an Alexander epic, they pushed back the start date several times. (The latter film still did not have a start date as of press time, though a Universal spokesman said the project "is still in development." De Laurentiis did not return phone calls seeking comment.)

"(The rival pictures) would have hurt us, but all you can do is keep your eyes on the prize," Stone says.

Borman acknowledges that he was not always so philosophical.

"We were in a race against time with everybody else out there," he says. "Was I nervous? Of course. But did I think of pulling out? No, because this was something special. Oliver had so much passion, and it was clear this would probably be his biggest achievement in life. You could see it and smell it, and when the script came in, it was one of those scripts that glowed in the dark."

Principal photography on "Alexander" began Sept. 22 and wrapped Feb. 13, lensing 36 days in Morocco, 18 days in Thailand and the rest of the time on a London soundstage. In all, production was completed on a brisk 93-day schedule that stands as a tribute to Stone's persistence of vision.

That said, the shoot was not without complications. "On a film like this, anything that can go wrong does go wrong," Borman says. "We had a sandstorm in Morocco, but that didn't stop us shooting. Then, when we were in Thailand, there was a (film) stock problem: The stock coming into Thailand got X-rayed, and we basically didn't know which of the reels were damaged. Oliver just kept shooting."

The production also was thrown for a loop when Farrell broke his foot while off-duty in Thailand -- reportedly by falling down a flight of stairs -- and had to be flown to a Bangkok hospital. Borman says Farrell insisted on returning to the set in a removable cast and shooting an action scene on horseback -- railing against an elephant -- while wearing the cast.

Further complicating the logistics, Stone opted in many cases to hire real extras for his cast-of-thousands battle scenes, instead of using computer-generated imagery to transform a small or even moderate crowd of actors into the hordes of unstoppable mauraders that appear onscreen.

Through it all, though, Leto says Stone kept a firm grip on the reins of the production.

"I had heard a lot of wild stories about Oliver, but I found him to be one of the most focused directors I'd ever worked with and the most hard-working," Leto says. "He was always thinking about the film, and all I saw was complete conviction and commitment to his creation. It was really like watching a great conductor or sculptor; it was fascinating to see him on a roll."

It was no small relief, then, that all went smoothly on the financial side. Union Bank underwrote the bulk of the loan to the tune of about $130 million, the latest venture in a collaboration with Borman that dates back to 1998 and includes about 15 films. Because a majority of "Alexander's" presale deals were made in foreign currencies, the bank had to "prelock" their values to protect against further gains against the U.S. dollar, especially by the high-riding euro.

Union, in turn, spread the risk by piecing out the loan to six other banks: the Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America, Citibank, City National Bank, US Bank and Natexis.

"It was very well-accepted by the bank market," says Christine Ball, senior vp and manager of communications and entertainment at Union Bank of California, who notes that Union worked on the financing for six months (May-November 2003). "They had good collateral and good buyers -- the gap was extremely small."

All that remains to be seen is if Stone's "Alexander" has equity among the world's moviegoers. If Warners' Brad Pitt starrer "Troy," a May release based on Homer's ancient epic, is an indication, then there remains a solid appetite for historical actioners with eye-catching leads from big-name directors -- though Wolfgang Petersen's 163-minute R-rated actioner arguably has performed better overseas than it has domestically, earning more than $132 million of its $480.5 million worldwide gross Stateside at press time.

"Alexander's biggest hero was Achilles," the central character in "Troy," Borman says, noting that Warners believed that the two films offered "marketing synergy."

As for how his passion project will fare at the boxoffice, Stone remains sanguine. With something so close to his heart, objectivity is nearly impossible -- and ultimately, as every director knows, it is a thousand times easier to navigate the complicated landscape of indie film financing and to perfect a complex, character-driven historical epic than it is to predict boxoffice reception to a project that has required months and years of love and resolve.

"It is a very tough process, the mixture of everything," Stone says. "I got much, if not most, of what I wanted, but you never know (how it will turn out) until it's over."