Terry Gilliam gets greenlight to restart Don Quixote film

Terry Gilliam finally has the go-ahead to restart shooting on his long-delayed adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote 17 years after it was abandoned, it has been announced.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote will begin filming in September after financing was provided by Cosmopolis producer Paulo Branco. The budget has been set at €16 million (Dh66.9 million, £12.8 million), and the film will feature John Hurt and Unbroken’s Jack O’Connell in roles originally occupied by Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp. As suggested by Gilliam in 2014, it would appear that the film’s plot has substantially evolved from the Depp/Rochefort version, which involved a time-travelling commercials director who meets Quixote in the 17th century. Now it seems O’Connell will play a film-maker in a modern day setting — a self-reflexive theme in which Gilliam references his own failure to make the film the first time around. “It’s more about how movies can damage people,” Gilliam said at the time.

Gilliam’s crisis-ridden first attempt to make the film was chronicled in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, which revealed the series of disasters that hit the production, including flash floods and constant aircraft noise and culminating in Rochefort becoming too ill to continue. The film was shut down and a $15 million insurance claim was made.