The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Short description
Toby, a cynical director of television commercials, is in Spain when he encounters an elderly shoemaker who is convinced he is Don Quixote. The old man mistakes Toby for his squire, Sancho Panza, and pulls him into a series of misadventures in which reality and fantasy increasingly blur. The journey forces Toby to reckon with a student film he made years earlier, an adaptation of Cervantes that transformed the lives of the people in a small Spanish village. Adam Driver plays Toby and Jonathan Pryce plays the shoemaker; Stellan Skarsgård, Jordi Mollà, Joana Ribeiro and Óscar Jaenada also appear.
The film was directed by Terry Gilliam, who wrote the screenplay with Tony Grisoni. It is the fourteenth of the fourteen features Gilliam has directed, following The Zero Theorem in 2013. The production brought together companies and broadcasters from several countries, including Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, the United States and France, on a budget of about 19 million dollars.
Released in 2018, the film runs 133 minutes. Its worldwide box office, roughly 2 million dollars, fell far short of its budget. Audiences have been divided: on IMDb it holds 6.3 out of 10 from more than 21,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 out of 10 from over 1,000 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 128 reviews places it close to those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- In 1990, Gilliam called his friend, producer Jake Eberts, with a proposal to make a film about Don Quixote. Hearing enthusiastic approval in response, the director first read the novel and came to a discouraging conclusion: the story of the wandering knight was absolutely unfilmable. Despite this, Terry began working on the screenplay with Charles McKeown, and the producer promised to find $20 million. But the project stalled as the director became engrossed in another screenplay. Gilliam returned to the film a second time in 1997, after the success of "12 Monkeys." Despite difficulties with funding, filming began in Spain in August 2000, but due to an injury to Jean Rochefort (Don Quixote) and a sudden hurricane, filming was suspended and then the project was shut down, costing the studio $15 million, with the insurance company holding the rights to the screenplay as collateral for several years. The project's swift collapse was captured in the documentary "Lost in La Mancha."
- In 2006, the director announced the resumption of the project, assuring that all disputes with the insurance company had been resolved. However, the film's budget was reduced from $32 to $20 million, and filming never started.
- In 2010, Terry Gilliam spoke again about "Don Quixote" and talked about the script, but filming was postponed again due to problems with sponsors.
- In 2014, artist D. Warren, inspired by Gilliam's new statements, even began making new sketches for the film, but a continuation did not follow.
- In the summer of 2015, the director signed a cooperation agreement with Amazon Studios, but the project still didn't move forward.
- In the spring of 2016, Gilliam announced the launch of the project at Cannes, with filming scheduled for October 2016. In February 2017, filming began, and in June the director announced that after 17 years he had finished filming the long-gestating film.
- Sean Connery, Nigel Hawthorne, Jean Rochefort, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, and Michael Palin were considered for the role of Don Quixote.
- Danny DeVito, Johnny Depp, and Ewan McGregor were considered for the role of Sancho Panza.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
