He finally did it. After close to twenty years, having endured legendary production problems, reshoots, awful weather, cast defections, and more, Terry Gilliam's white whale, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, is actually complete. Dammit, I hope there were bottles poppin' all over the place.
'Quixote' will forever be the standard by which all shitty productions are measured. The first attempt at it, which was supposed to star Johnny Depp back when he was young and actually making good movies, was such a dismal failure it was chronicled in the documentary Lost in La Mancha, which didn't hold back in showing everything that went wrong and Gilliam's bafflement at it. For years he's tried repeatedly to start again with little success, but apparently the formula worked out with new star Adam Driver and the financial support of Amazon Studios. Olga Kurylenko, Jonathan Pryce, and Stellan Skarsgard, co-star.
Gilliam dropped the news on his Facebook page, sharing excitedly...
“Sorry for the long silence. I’ve been busy packing the truck and am now heading home. After 17 years, we have completed the shoot of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. Muchas gracias to all the team and believers. QUIXOTE VIVE!”
Perhaps it's best Amazon picked up the tab for this because chances are the film won't make any money at all in theatrical release. I look at another veteran director's long-developing passion project, Martin Scorsese's Silence, which was a big deal to cinephiles but concluded its run with only $7M worldwide. And that's Scorsese, with a film that included proven stars like Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, and Driver again.
Hopefully we'll get to see this next year, assuming nothing happens in post-production, like a hurricane landing on the editing bay.
