Terry Gilliam's run as the unluckiest man in showbusiness looks like it might continue: Warners and producer Joel Silver are planning a swashbuckling, actiony adaptation of Don Quixote, and there's a terrible chance that that might be bad news for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
The rumour has it that Silver and Warners are planning an adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' 17th century masterpiece that would be rather in the style of Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes or, even closer, something along the lines of Pirates of the Caribbean. So it'll be less with the tin-pan hat and windmills and more with the jousting with actual giants in a fantastical world, then. We can't help thinking that such an approach would somewhat (nay, entirely) miss the point of Cervantes' satire, and is rather akin to remaking Hamlet as a revenge thriller starring Bruce Willis. Still, it could look cool, which we guess is what matters to the guys upstairs.
Pajiba, who reported the development, write that the project is being fast-tracked as a tentpole film, and historically in the case of competing projects, the film to go first wins, which would be bad news for Gilliam's rival production, currently set to star Ewan McGregor and Robert Duvall. On the other hand, and with our optimist hat on, maybe this will propell Gilliam's film towards the screen to get there first, or at least give it a boost of publicity. Surely the universe isn't sufficiently cruel to hamstring him again?
So what do you think of the idea of a swashbuckling magical Quixote? Sorry, wait, we can't hear you over the anguished screams of literature scholars everywhere; maybe you could post it on the comments board?