Terry Gilliam’s Quixote Dead, Time Bandits To Be 3D’d

News, Projects

Terry Gilliam’s efforts to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote have become legendary for the extreme case of bad luck surrounding the film’s production.

The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha chronicles Gilliam’s first failed attempt to film an adaption of Cervantes’ classic novel. After the film was shut down due to injuries in the cast, natural disasters and other assorted cataclysms, Gilliam shelved the project for years. Earlier this year, though, it was announced that Gilliam was set to finally film the movie with Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor joining the cast.

This news seems to have been a premature, though, as funding for the film has disappeared and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has once again been shuttled off to development hell. Gilliam is still committed to one day finishing the project and Duvall and McGregor remain on board as well. While we may one day see the film, Gilliam is currently working on two other projects.

Besides directing The Damnation of Faust, a Beriloz opera for the English National Opera Company, Gilliam is working on a 3D conversion of his classic film Time Bandits, as reported by Bleeding Cool from the Deauville Film Festival.

While 3D conversions of classic films is nothing new, Time Bandits‘ potential conversion will make it one of the oldest films to undergo the process digitally (George Lucas is currently working on a 3D version of his Star Wars films). It will be interesting to see if Gilliam can revisit his film without falling temptation to tweak a few other things in the movie. I’d hate for one of my favorite directors to go the way of Lucas and Steven Spielberg and mess up his classic films with unnecessary meddling.

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.