May 15 2009Here Comes a 'Lost in La Mancha' Sequel

If Terry Gilliam's 2000 attempt at filming a Don Quixote movie were a dog, you would have just put it to sleep. Production was riddled with problems--tight budget constraints, constant jets overhead, Biblically disastrous weather, and an actor with a double-herniated disc trying to ride a horse, to name a few--and eventually canceled, resulting in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, a chronicle of the disaster.

But Gilliam isn't one to let setbacks get to him--he just completed a film in which his lead actor died part-way through shooting, and he bothered releasing The Brothers Grimm on DVD--and Variety reports he's going to give this Quixote thing one more shot:

The director is reviving his passion project "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" nearly a decade after his first attempt was derailed.

Gilliam and screenwriter Tony Grisoni, who also wrote the first version, have rewritten and updated the script. The new film will revolve around a filmmaker who is charmed into joining Don Quixote's eternal quest for his ladylove, becoming an unwitting Sancho Panza.

"I'm not so much a filmmaker as someone who gets possessed by an idea and it doesn't leave me until I make the film," Gilliam told Variety. "I commit myself to it so fully."

Gilliam is also in talks with Johnny Depp, who had been set to star in the first ill-fated attempt as a modern-day ad exec who travels back in time and is mistaken for Sancho Panza by Don Quixote. Scheduling concerns are seen as the biggest obstacle to Depp's participation this time.

Already we're having scheduling issues with Johnny Depp? So we have about a month before a rogue scientist claims a meteor is heading straight for wherever Gillian plans to shoot?

I wish the best for you and this project, T.G., but right now I'm going to try to restrain my enthusiasm and just hope for another good but tragic documentary.