Jinxed?

Seven years after the epic fiasco that was made into an acclaimed documentary, Terry Gilliam feels ready to give Don Quixote another go.

The former Monty Python has been obsessed with Cervantes's 1605 novel about a deluded knight fighting windmills since 1990. In 2002, Terry Gilliam's first attempt at filming his screenplay «The Man Who Killed Don Quixote», was jinxed with flash floods, military airplanes, and his lead actor, veteran Frenchman Jean Rochefort, stricken with sudden ill-health – all captured on film and edited into the catastrophe documentary «Lost In La Mancha».

The next version will still star Johnny Depp as a contemporary marketing exec who travels back in time to become Quixote's faithful sidekick Sancho Panza, while the actor who will take on the mythical figure is yet unknown.

But the project is said to be cursed: Orson Welles spent the second half of his career taking on commercial directing jobs in the hopes of financing an adaptation of the novel he'd penned in 1957. It remained unfinished at his death in 1985.

However, Gilliam's hopes are high: «I re-read the greatest script ever written and realise we gotta get rewriting. [...] I'm starting to think I was lucky, because maybe the film will be better. It will have matured a bit longer.»