Following a festival-opening screening of the director’s latest, The Zero Theorem, ComingSoon.net caught up with Terry Gilliam at the Camerimage Festival of the Art of Cinematography in Bydgoszcz, Poland. We’ll have the full interview posted shortly, but Gilliam did deliver some exciting news that we wanted to share right away. He says that his next film will finally be (he hopes) his long-awaited Miguel de Cervantes adaptation The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
“I’m going to try to do ‘Don Quixote’ again,” Gilliam responded when asked about what he’s working on now. “I think this is the seventh time. Lucky seven, maybe. We’ll see if it happens. This is kind of my default position, going back to that. I actually just want to make it and get rid of it. Get it out of my life.”
Production on Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote actually began in 2000 with Jean Rochefort as Quixote and Johnny Depp in the role of Sancho Panza. Unfortunately, the shoot met with dilemma after dilemma and was never finished, although the behind-the-scenes of the troubled production did end up becoming a feature-length documentary, Lost in La Mancha, in 2002.
Gilliam’s new hope for the project is a welcome reversal of his thoughts in August when he told Deadline that he was just about ready to throw in the towel on the project.
“I don’t know if it will be good or bad,” Gilliam now says with a smile. “The dangerous thing is that a lot of people are waiting for it, so I can disappoint a lot of people maybe.”
Other attempts at bringing the project to the big screen have involved Robert Duvall as Quixote and Ewan McGregor as the Sancho Panza. There’s currently no word as to which cast members might be involved this time around, but Gilliam seems cautiously optimistic that he might finally bring his impossible dream to life.
Check back soon for our full interview with Gilliam and many other filmmakers from Camerimage, running now through November 23.
(Photo Credit: WENN)
