Terry Gilliam restarting “Don Quixote” in spring
Terry Gilliam arrives at the premiere of his film “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which features the last onscreen performance by the late Heath Ledger, earlier this week in London. (Associated Press photo)
Filmmaker Terry Gilliam plans to restart work on his long-scrapped film “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” in spring, he said earlier this week at the screening for his new film “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus” (which features the late Heath Ledger’s last onscreen performance).
According to EmpireOnline, Gilliam described the film as a “donkey, and now it has three of its legs,” indicating that he still has some blanks to fill in but feels the project is on track.
“We’re up and running again, we’ve rewritten the script and finally got it back, the budget’s come in… and I think we’ve found our Quixote! But who’s it going to be? Well, I’m not going to tell you, but it’ll start next spring,” the former Monty Python member said at the London premiere of “Doctor Parnassus.”
Gilliam, whose previous films include “Brazil” and “Time Bandits,” in 2000 embarked on a doomed mission to make a film version of Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s famed novel “Don Quixote” starring Johnny Depp (pre-”Pirates of the Caribbean” resurgence), Jean Rochefort and Vanessa Paradis.
Everything that could go wrong did on that production: Gilliam couldn’t get U.S. backers, so he secured European funds and locations for the film. But the majority of the sets were destroyed in flash flooding, and Rochefort was forced to pull out after sustaining a serious injury.
The story of the disastrous production was told in the excellent 2002 documentary “Lost in La Mancha,” directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe and narrated by Jeff Bridges.
But Gilliam announced late last year that he was planning to revisit the film, and from the sounds of this report, so far, so good.
-BAM
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