Ewan McGregor Joins Terry Gilliam's 'Don Quixote'

Well, it's not exactly nabbing Johnny Depp from a financial backer's perspective, but Terry Gilliam has managed to wrangle Ewan McGregor for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to star opposite Robert Duvall, cast as the titular traveler. Empire reports that the film will start shooting in September, which is a little later than we'd like, but at least it's going. And Gilliam has to work with a $20 million budget instead of nearly twice as much when he tried to make this film a decade ago. If you're new to the project, check out the documentary Lost in La Mancha, which goes into pretty good detail about how events conspired against it the first time. It's not, of course, Cervantes' Man of La Mancha that's being made here; Gilliam has spun it in a new direction, so McGregor will be playing an advertising executive who goes back in time, just like Huey Lewis & the News suggested, and stumbles onto Quixote during his many quests. Said Gilliam of his cast, "Robert Duvall is one of the greats, no question - and he can ride a horse! And Ewan has gotten better over the years. He was wonderful in The Ghost. There's a lot of colours to Ewan that he's not been showing recently and it's time for him to show them again." The director added, "He's got a great sense of humour and he's a wonderful actor. He's wonderfully boyish and can be charming - when he flashes a smile, everybody melts. He wields it like a nuclear bomb," I'm happy this one's finally gaining traction; I was worried after Doctor Parnassus came up empty at the box office that Gilliam would have a hard time putting this back together again.