Terry Gilliam Still Waiting for 'Don Quixote' Financing

Here we go again: Ten years removed from the Don Quixote movie that was somewhat literally washed away, Terry Gilliam has attracted Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor for another go at it. However, it appears that money is again an issue, so who knows when this might happen.

"The financing collapsed about a month and a half ago," Gilliam said Saturday at the Deauville American Film Festival. "I shouldn't be here. The plan was to be shooting Quixote right now."

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Movie Review - 'Get Low'

Get Low Starring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, and Sissy Spacek Directed by Aaron Schneider Rated PG-13

You don't have to look to far to find a great Robert Duvall performance. Pick a movie and chances are he'll be good in it. Sometimes, as with The Great Santini or his own The Apostle, he has the ability to raise pretty average stuff to great heights simply by being that much better at his job than nearly every other actor who has ever drawn a breath. Duvall is one of the best film actors we've ever seen, but more importantly, he's and one of the best and most empathetic interpreters of character we'll ever see. In his latest film, Get Low, Duvall plays a man who reaches a conclusion we all must if we live long enough, namely that we've lived long enough. We won't be around forever. And it's bittersweet to see Duvall at this point because, at 79, he'll leave a vast void sooner than later. Who is the next Robert Duvall? And how long will we have to wait to see him? Get Low is a retelling of an unusual occurrence. In 1938, Felix "Bush" Breazeale came out of seclusion - where he had spent most of the century, minus a few trips to town here and there - to plan his own funeral. Except Felix wasn't really dying, see; he just wanted to be around for his own funeral to hear what people had to say about him. He hires a funeral home (run by Bill Murray and Lucas Black) to not only put together the event, but help him advertise it. Yep: Felix's funeral that's not really a funeral would be the social event of the year. Pretty good for a guy who lives alone in the middle of the Tennessee woods and is more whispered about than spoken to. Then there's the girl. There's always a girl. In this case, Felix bumps into Mattie (Sissy Spacek), who a lifetime ago - before he grew a backwoods beard - made his world go 'round. But there's a dark part of their history, and it's the sort of secret that just might make a man discard everything he's known to become a recluse.

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Trailer - Robert Duvall and Bill Murray in 'Get Low'

Get Low was one of those movies that almost fell in last last year's awards season, based on positive responses to the performance by Robert Duvall - gee, imagine that - but it was tabled until 2010.

It played a handful of festivals last year, beginning with Toronto, and it's been on the schedule at Sundance, SXSW, and Tribeca, along with festivals in San Francisco and Seattle, and Sony Classics has chosen July 30th for its official US release. Expect a slow roll-out, similar to what the company usually executes. In support of that, there's a new trailer for the film, which sheds a little more light on the peculiar business arrangement between Duvall and Bill Murray. Keep in mind as you watch this trailer that Get Low is based on a true story.

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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.

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Gilliam Again Says Depp Will Star in 'Don Quixote'

Terry Gilliam, presumably months away now from returning to La Mancha for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, tell Paste - rather nonchalantly - that Johnny Depp will be back for the film, roughly a decade after Gilliam had to put the troubled production on the shelf.

Asked if Quixote was his next project now that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is up to the distributor and audiences (it's being released by Sony Classics next week in a few cities), Gilliam confirmed Depp's return with a simple "yeah," adding, "And I rewrote the script. Robert Duvall has agreed to play Quixote. I’m really excited. So it’s all that business of funding now." The Duvall thing broke a couple weeks ago, and that's incredible news. Very few actors are more educational than Duvall and to see him on screen with Depp is an enticing prospect...if that funding comes through.

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