I’m always curious about the world that director Terry Gilliam is living in. Because having seen most of his work: Time Bandits, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 12 Monkeys, The Brothers Grimm, whether it’s original work or adaptation, it’s obvious that he’s got quite the imagination, even the upcoming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus looks like a weird movie but we’re still drawn to it, no mater if it’s Heath Ledger’s final movie mainly because we’re just so damn curious about the world that Gilliam is living in.
One of his future projects was supposed to be ZERO THEOREM, a sci-fi that’s been considered Brazil meets The Matrix, that has the name Billy Bob Thornton attached to star but unfortunately Gilliam told fansite Dreams that it’s not going to happen.
That was a thing that I was going to be doing this year. We were moving ahead on it with Dick Zanuck, who’s been producing the Tim Burton movies of late.
Just a very good script. It appeals because it is so simple to do, quite small and contained, it’s a very smart script. I thought I could do it quite quickly and cheaply, and that would be a nice one, rather than getting caught in more expensive, more complicated or hard-to-finance things. But the year just got swallowed up by Parnassus and publicity, and preparation for Don Quixote. I just didn’t think it would be viable and I pulled the plug earlier this year.
Last I heard Gilliam still wants to resurrect THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE about a modern-day ad executive who travels back in time and is mistaken for Sancho Panza by Don Quixote and Gilliam is still giving Johnny Depp the first dibs even though Depp already said he might be too busy to return to that project again… so QUIXOTE without Depp is a possibility because the filmmaker said much has changed since their first effort, he’s changed the story, even the characters and made them more well-rounded.
