Chaos often reigns in the world of filmmaker Terry Gilliam, whose fights with distributors and producers over movies like Brazil and The Brothers Grimm are the stuff of Hollywood legend. Then there was The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, starring Heath Ledger, who died about halfway through, necessitating major rewrites that allowed his character to transform into other actors.
But no Gilliam production has been more chaotic than The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, about a modern-day marketing executive who travels back in time to meet Miguel de Cervantes’ delusional would-be knight of La Mancha. The initial production which began shooting in 2000, starring Johnny Depp as ad-man Tony Grisoni and French actor Jean Rochefort as Quixote, was ultimately shut down after weather and location disasters, and Rochefort injuring himself on a horse, sustaining a herniated disc. A movie was made, but it was called Lost in la Mancha–what would have been a behind-the-scenes documentary for a potential DVD turned into a cautionary documentary about how not to make an epic fantasy.
Gilliam has tried to revive the production multiple times in the years since, but most of his attempts failed, prompting talk of a “Curse of Quixote,” as both Orson Welles and Walt Disney had started Quixote projects that remained unfinished. Even his most recent attempt, with Adam Driver in the Depp role, had its share of trouble when Alfama Films (which had failed to secure funds) legally threatened Amazon Studios (which had succeeded).
And yet, somehow, today (via Indiewire), this happened:
Even that announcement was not without controversy–multiple comments on the Facebook post accused the production of damaging a 12th-century convent and the trees around it. Nonetheless, we’ll now get to see if Terry Gilliam’s real-life dream of the impossible dream can possibly live up to nearly two decades of anticipation.
Are you hyped to see a dream project come to life, or do you think it can’t possibly live up to expectations? Don your thinking caps and comment below!
Image: Flickr/Colin Knowles
