Its taken nearly 20 years, but Terry Gilliams long-gestating film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, is ready to be unleashed upon the world. Maybe. Probably. On May 19, the drama will close out the Cannes Film Festival, as far as we know—giving one of the most cursed productions in film history a storybook ending, if it does come to pass. But reaching this moment has been anything but easy. Most recently, the film was the subject of a troublesome lawsuit, which caused it to lose Amazon as a U.S. distributor. In addition, Gilliam was hospitalized this past weekend after suffering a “very minor stroke,” executive producer Jeremy Thomas told Deadline. Gilliam quickly bounced back, tweeting on Wednesday that he was feeling “restored” and sporting a T-shirt that read “Im not dead yet.”
And all this was just in the last few weeks! Its a fitting crescendo of madness for a film thats been fighting its way to the big screen since 1989, one so uniquely cursed that directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, who made a documentary about its ill-fated production back in 2002, just announced that they have made another documentary about all the behind-the-scenes drama—this time titled He Dreams of Giants, according to Variety.
“We began to think this is more a film about an internal struggle in an artists mind,” Fulton told Variety. “What is it like for an artist to be standing on the brink of actually finishing this project, finally?”
“Even on the set, we would say the conflicts raging around Terry right now of making the movie are not nearly as interesting as whats going on inside his head,” Pepe added.
Big if true—because the conflict surrounding the film has been enormous. Gilliam cooked up the idea for his take on Don Quixote back in 1989, inspired by the classic Spanish novel. His story is set in the modern era, revolving around an advertising executive named Toby (played in the final product by Adam Driver) and a Spanish man who thinks he really is Don Quixote (played by Jonathan Pryce). Gilliam didnt actually get the ball rolling on production until 2000, with a cast that originally included actors like Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis, and Rossy de Palma. However, as the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha shows, the production was instantly plagued with troubles, from a monsoon flooding the set to severe performance issues. Ultimately, the production was canceled altogether.
Thus began the cycle of Gilliam trying to resurrect the project with a new cast. Different names have been mentioned over the years: Ewan McGregor and Robert Duvall, Jack OConnell and John Hurt. But attempts at reviving the film have been hampered each time, sputtering and failing until 2016, when Gilliam cast a post-Star Wars Adam Driver in the lead. “Thank God for Star Wars,” Gilliam said in an interview with The Guardian at the time. “Adam Driver is bankable! He can get us the money we need!”
At a 2016 Cannes press conference, he also defended his project, saying that any talk of the film being cursed “is bullshit.” Then again, the director also acknowledged the absurd challenges the film has faced along the way, and explained why he was so determined to finish it.
“Its one of those dream nightmares that never leave you until you finish the thing,” Gilliam said. “I want to get this film out of my life so that I can get on with the rest of my life.”
And so began the next iteration of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, with a cast that was rounded out by Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, and Olga Kurylenko. In June 2017, the film finally wrapped, and Gilliams long, horrible nightmare was over. Almost.
“Any sensible person would have given up years ago but sometimes pig-headed dreamers win in the end, so thank you to all of the ill paid fantasists and believers who have joined to make this longstanding dream a reality!” he said on Facebook then. The film was later announced as the closing title for this years Cannes Film Festival.
But, of course, it couldnt be that easy. Paulo Branco, a producer who worked on an earlier production of Don Quixote, soon filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to block the film from screening at the festival. On Wednesday, a French court rejected the suit, paving the way for Don Quixote to be shown after all. However, in the midst of the suit, Gilliam was hospitalized (but made a healthy recovery) and Amazon backed out as a distributor on the project, washing its hands of the drama altogether. Exhausted yet? How could you not be! But soon, should another distributor come to the rescue, youll finally be able to watch the movie thats caused Gilliam over a decades worth of trouble. If not, theres always that second Don Quixote documentary.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:Met Gala 2018: The Best-Dressed StarsYohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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