Director Terry Gilliam’s famously troubled epic The Man Who Killed Don Quixote will finally screen in Australian cinemas. The film arrives decades after it was originally conceived, following a seemingly never-ending series of set backs. Starring Jonathan Pryce and Adam Driver, Don Quixote will play at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
There’s no word yet about a wider national release. We’re hoping the film will open across Australia later this year, but given how many things have gone wrong so far, we wouldn’t be surprised if it somehow manages to disappear from the face of the earth.
Gilliam, the legendary director whose films include 12 Monkeys, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, first conceived of a Don Quixote movie back in 1989. Since then the project has encountered so many problems it inspired a 2002 documentary, Lost in La Mancha, chronicling its ill-fated life.
When Gilliam’s first proper crack at it went into production in 2000, with a cast including Johnny Depp, the production was plagued with problems. Among other disasters, floods destroyed the set and the French actor playing Quixote, Jean Rochefort, arrived sick and unable to ride a horse.
The production was abandoned, but Gilliam never gave up. He tried and failed to relaunch the project again and again. The director finally got the film back up and running in 2016, describing it as “one of those dream nightmares that never leave you until you finish the thing.”
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was locked in to premiere at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival. And wouldn’t you know it…shortly before its first screening, producer Paulo Branco, who had worked on an earlier version of the film, filed a lawsuit attempting to block the film from screening.
Branco failed and the screening went ahead as planned. As this was happening, Terry Gilliam suffered a small stroke and was hospitalised.
The filmed seemed to be cursed, but it’s now finally (almost) here. Touch wood.
