Will We Get a 'Mr. Vertigo' From Terry Gilliam?

When it comes to Terry Gilliam, nothing is certain until it is done. So goes his luck at any and every production he's tried and either has or hasn't successfully completed. The most apparent failure was with The Man Who Killed Don Quixote which was "financed, shooting, shut down, re-conceived, cast, ultimately not financed" and the most triumphant near miss was recently seen in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, where Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law stepped up to help complete the film when Heath Ledger suddenly died. That last one must have really hurt everyone on the production team.

Click to read more ...

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."

Click to read more ...

Warner Bros. Making Big Budget 'Don Quixote'

Producer Joel Silver has just given Terry Gilliam the finger. Gilliam tried to make a Don Quixote film a decade ago and now that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is finally back on track, here comes Hollywood with its own proposed big budget blockbuster version of the classic story.

Writes Pajiba:

"Their intention is clear. They’re going to muck up the original story completely. It’s being described as a Pirates of Caribbean-style swashbuckling version of a story in which we discover that Don Quixote isn’t crazy and that there is, in fact, a fantasy world. Don’z gonna get him some windmill, folks."

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Reader Review: 'Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Starring Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, and Lily Cole Directed by Terry Gilliam Rated PG-13 Review by Gordon Gravy

Hey Big Picture Readers, It’s Gordon Gravy here with a special review of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a movie Colin Boyd didn’t have time to see. And I’ll tell you what: You might not have time to see it, either. Yep, this movie is nearing the end of its theatrical run because you all decided to give your money to James Cameron and see Avatar. Well, if you have a few bucks left over, or just cashed in some aluminum cans or something, you should definitely consider tossing some coin Terry Gilliam’s way. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Just like that overblown epic starring a bunch of computer generated blue-people, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was meant to be seen on the big-screen. Maybe not IMAX-big, because you would surely see how miniscule the effects budget was, but definitely something bigger than your reasonably large 1080p plasma television at home. Director Terry Gilliam, back in fine form after the studios pasteurized him a few years ago, packs the “worlds” of his movie with just as much spectacle as Pandora and even gives his contemporary Tim Burton a run for the money, especially when it comes to oddity-factor. The first of two universes represented in this movie is “the real world”, dark and dirty as it is. This is where our protagonist, an aging Dr. Parnassus, finds himself surrounded by those who depend on him. People like his daughter Valentina (played by the unbelievably scrumptious Lily Cole), or his jesters Anton and Percy (the latter a dwarf played by Verne Troyer of Austin Powers fame). They are a rag-tag bunch of gypsies passing from town to wretched town in their ancient horse drawn carriage hoping to make a few bucks here and there by entertaining the local drunks leaving the bars at night. Ironically, Parnassus is himself a drunk, self-medicating to escape some unspoken burdens leaving the rest of his troupe to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the performing. Consequently, they are booed out of town more often than they find cash paying customers, and the little audience they are able to scrape up hardly realizes that stashed on board this rickety carriage is a mirror that has magical powers; it acts as a portal into the good doctor’s mind, a place where imagination runs wild and he is not effected by age or drink.

Click to read more ...