We're sure you don't need to be reminded what happened the first time around. You can check out the infamous documentary Lost in La Mancha for that particular saga. There was another financial hiccup that killed pre-production on a renewed attempt in 2010, but now it seems Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may finally be going before his cameras. The director tells Coming Soon that, with The Zero Theorem complete, he hopes it will be his next project. "I think this is the seventh time [I've tried to get it going]," he reflects. "Lucky seven, maybe?"
Not a straight adaptation of Miguel De Cervantes' 17th Century Spanish classic, Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was originally set to star Johnny Depp as a time-travelling ad executive who teams up with Jean Rochefort in the title role. Then in 2010 it was planned that Ewan McGregor would be the suit, and Robert Duvall would have his lance pointed windmill-wards. Whether that's still in the stars or we're looking at another new cast is unclear.
"We'll see if it happens," Gilliam shrugs. "This is kind of my default position, going back to that. I actually just want to make it and get rid of it. Get it out of my life! I don't know if it will be good or bad. The dangerous thing is that a lot of people are waiting for it, so I can disappoint a lot of people maybe."
It's no exaggeration at this point to call Gilliam's a Quixotic vision, so his strangely resigned determination is nothing but appropriate. Here's hoping it turns out not to have been, in the end, an impossible dream. While we're waiting to find out, The Zero Theorem is released in the UK on March 14 next year.