Terry Gilliam Has Begun Shooting ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,’ For Real This Time
Terry Gilliam has finally begun filming on his very, very long-gestating passion project, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”
A source close to the production confirmed to IndieWire that shooting began this week. There’s also the first photos from the set in the form of two Instagram posts, one from actress Rossy de Palma (who was to be part of the movie’s original production in 2000) and one from makeup artist Sylvie Imbert.
De Palma’s post, dated Feb. 27, is a photo of the cover of the film’s screenplay captioned, “FinallyHereWeAre.” Imbert’s post, dated March 6, shows her poring over a production grid for the film and is captioned, “Final touches last night.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRSOYn-DiN5/
The original 2000 production was infamously delayed and waylaid by a variety of disasters, which were captured in the 2002 documentary “Lost In La Mancha.” In October 2016, Gilliam was supposed to go into production with leads Adam Driver and Michael Palin, but the shoot was delayed again, days before filming. At the time, Gilliam explained to BBC Radio 2’s Jonathan Ross that “a Portuguese chap” failed to get the money together in time.
“That Portugese chap” may refer to Paulo Branco, a producer who stepped in to finance the 2016 production. However, a representative for Blanco told IndieWire that “Paulo Branco won’t produce Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, ‘ due to disagreement with Terry Gilliam.”
Terry Gilliam signed a deal with Amazon Studios back at Cannes 2015, the same time that Jim Jarmusch made the deal that led to last year’s “Paterson.” However, it’s unclear if “Don Quixote” is part of that arrangement. Amazon has never announced its association with the project, although in a 2015 interview with The Playlist Gilliam clearly believed they were on board:
“Amazon and the like are interesting because they are all still in their formative stages,” he said. “They’re not a bureaucracy that has been around for years like the studio system, and so they’re full of people that are open to new and fresh ideas. So it’s a good time to be working with people like that.”
According to IMDB, Driver remains cast as the lead, an arrogant advertising exec who comes home to his Spanish village and somehow becomes entangled with the legendarily insane would-be knight. Jonathan Pryce is set to play Quixote, with Olga Kurylenko and Stellan Skarsgård in supporting roles.
John Hurt, who died in January, was briefly attached last year to play Quixote.
