Pajiba is reporting that a new swashbuckling action-adventure version of Miguel Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote is in development at Warner Bros. from producer Joel Silver.
The film is allegedly being fast-tracked for production — with the thought being that the film could serve as a new tentpole franchise for Warner Bros. The story, as described by Pajiba’s report, would see the formally delusional Quixote taken in a new direction where he is in fact not crazy and is in fact at the epicenter of a fantastical world.
What this new project could mean for director Terry Gilliam’s long gestating The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is not known. Gilliam’s project had previously fallen apart in a disastrous way (as chronicled in the film Lost in La Mancha). In recent years, though, Gilliam has made his intentions clear to finally shoot the movie — even attracting stars Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor.
With two Don Quixote related projects now competing for the finish line, it’ll be interesting to see which one can be made first and released. I don’t know about you, but I’m rooting for Gilliam — even if I haven’t exactly loved any of the films he’s released in the last 15 years.
Maybe making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote will finally snap him out of the funk he’s been in and he can go on and knock out the killer adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens that I know he has in him.
