Terry Gilliam has been trying to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for twelve years now. His disastrous first attempt was chronicled in the great documentary Lost in La Mancha. Johnny Depp originally starred as a modern-day businessman who gets sent back in time to 17th century Spain, where he falls in with Don Quixote (the crazy dude who fights a windmill), who’s mistaken him for Sancho Panza (the sidekick who rides around on a donkey and is sort of like the Boo Boo to Don Quixote’s Yogi, always telling him that the various crazy things he’s doing are bad ideas, but always ignored). There was flooding, aircraft noise, and a star breaking his back, and so the production was shut down. Gilliam’s been doggedly trying to get things going again ever since, and Depp’s character has since been recast as Ewan MacGregor.
Depp, in the meantime, has moved forward with his own Don Quixote project. Depp and his production company Infinitum Nihil have struck a deal with Disney to make an adaptation of Miguel Cervantes’s classic novel. Steve Pink and Jeff Morris will write the script. Terry Gilliam will presumably cry himself to sleep for more than a few nights.
