The first trailer for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has finally been released, 18 years after director Terry Gilliam’s long-gestating film first went into production.
Adapted from Cervantes’ “unfilmable” novel Don Quixote, Gilliam’s film has become one of the most famous examples of “development hell”. The former Monty Python man has attempted to make the film on eight occasions – most notably in 2000, when flash floods, Nato plane flyovers and a prostate infection that struck actor Jean Rochefort (who died last October) disrupted filming of a Johnny Depp-starring effort. That troubled production was the subject of a documentary, Lost in La Mancha.
Though Gilliam had continued to press forward with production of Don Quixote in the years since, it was assumed by many to be a quixotic quest. That was until last June when Gilliam announced that he had managed to acquire funding for the film and found new leads in the shape of Jonathan Pryce as a deluded man who believes himself to be Quixote and Adam Driver as an advertising executive who Pryce’s character believes is his sidekick, Sancho Panza.
Now comes our first glimpse at Gilliam’s long-awaited work, with a teaser trailer that shows Pryce attempting to restore the lost age of chivalry as Quixote – and, inevitably, tilting at a few windmills along the way. The trailer also confirms that the film will skip between the present day and the 17th century, with modern trappings seen alongside period detail.
Yet even the release of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’s trailer doesn’t necessarily mean this most protracted of movie sagas has come to an end, with France Inter reporting (via the Playlist) that one of the film’s former producers, Paulo Branco, is seeking to delay its release. Branco claims to have signed a contract in 2016 that would see him provide backing for Quixote and in return receive rights for the film. When that money wasn’t forthcoming, Gilliam found other producers to provide backing. However, Branco claims the contract he signed with Gilliam is still valid, meaning that the film cannot be released without Branco’s permission.
The dispute is currently the subject of a court case, with a judgment due to be delivered in June, meaning Gilliam’s film will not be permitted to receive its planned premiere at May’s Cannes film festival. It’s another bump in the long road for this most troubled of productions, though given the director has waited nearly two decades to see his magnum opus on screen, he can stand to hold on for a few more months.
