The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus recently premiered in the UK, and director Terry Gilliam was on hand to kick things off. Now that the whole Imaginarium -- Heath Ledger -- bad luck hurricane has wound down, attentions are turning to his next project -- the one plagued with more bad luck than Parnassus -- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. And Gilliam had more positive news to share.It started earlier in the week when he told Empire that the film is a "donkey, and now it has three of its legs," and then followed it up at the premiere with more solid news: "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." Even as recently as May, Gilliam was still focused on Johnny Depp, so does this mean Gilliam has definitely nabbed him? One can only hope...
A script, a budget, a start-date, and a star who could be Depp? It seemed like this day would NEVER come. It's been a long road that hasn't been blessed with quick solutions like three big-name stars filling in for the man who was lost. But seeing how long it has taken, and how much bad luck there has been, it feels wrong to get excited, to let the anticipation build. I will save my jubilation for three moments: When production begins. When production wraps. And when the film is on the screen and unstoppable.
1. you seem to be a little confused about this
first of all Johnny Depp was working on the movie the first time Gilliam tried to shoot it and he didn't play Don Quijote, he played the movie´s version of Sancho Panza, who´s Don Quijote´s reluctant sidekick, but on Gilliam´s version he´s a man from out time who travels in time/has an hallucination/it´s dreaming or something like that and meets the insane Don Quijote
second, a few weeks ago there were news that Johnny Depp couldn't be on board this time around due to schedule conflicts
Don Quijote is a very old guy, the first time they tried he was played by a 73 ear old french actor who´s too old now, there´s rumors that Gilliam offered the role to his friend and former Python Michael Palin
Posted at 8:43PM on Oct 7th 2009 by doa766