Well, here’s something no one expected to see in their lifetime (sorry, John Hurt): an actual trailer for Terry Gilliam’s long-doomed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
For those too young to remember when Gilliam started working on the film, the director has been trying to shoot this skewed take on Cervantes’ Don Quixote for now 20 years. He almost got it shot in 2000, with Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort in the lead roles, but that famously fell apart following several disasters—some literal, like the flash flood that obliterated his location and equipment. Since then, Ewan McGregor and Robert Duvall, Jack O’Connell and John Hurt, and Adam Driver and Michael Palin have, in their respective pairings, all been lined up to star, only for each iteration to yet again end in ruin.
From this video evidence, though, it seems the director has finally done it—perhaps not as he first envisioned, but nonetheless looking very much a Gilliam production (i.e., like a fantastical, filthy swap meet). This finally successful attempt sees Adam Driver filling the ad-man-turned-Sancho-Panza part, with Gilliam’s Brazil star Jonathan Pryce playing the crazy old man who believes himself Quixote.
Assuming this trailer isn’t our own delusional fantasy—which almost seems more likely at this point—The Man Who Killed Don Quixote should hit theaters later this year.
