Terry Gilliam is back in La Mancha

It was eight years ago that Terry Gilliam was on the point of fulfilling his dream: to portray the character of the “noble knight” on the big screen. The film was to be called The Man who Killed Don Quijote, and would star Johnny Depp and his wife Vanessa Paradis. However shooting, which was to take place in Spain, had to be stopped due to catastrophic weather conditions which destroyed the sets, and also because French actor Jean Rochefort, playing the Knight of the Sad Face, had to have a hernia operation.

All these setbacks were filmed in a documentary called Lost in La Mancha in 2002 by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.

But Gilliam has not given up and wants to try again. This time he can count on the collaboration of British producer Jeremy Thomas and his company, Recorded Pictures. Tony Grisoni, responsible for writing the script of the earlier film, has updated the story.

The film will be about a film director who decides to accompany Don Quijote on his quest to find his great love, Dulcinea, and so becomes his faithful Sancho Panza.

We still don’t know who will star in the film, although Gilliam is in negotiations with Johnny Depp about his appearance in the film, despite his busy agenda. In any case, it’s quite possible he will manage to convince him, given that Depp is the hero of Gilliam’s last project, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassuss". This is the film Heath Ledger was working on at the time of his death, and which will be premiered at Cannes on 22 May.