Only a decade ago, it was just another infamous Gilliam cautionary tale. Now, it’s two projects in pre-production. But then cautionary tales have always been popular in Hollywood.
Joel Silver (Sherlock Holmes) is prepping Miguel Cervantes’ masterful meta-novel for big-budget treatment, just as Terry Gilliam attempts to resurrect his The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which fell apart 10 years ago (as chronicled in the brutal doc Lost In La Mancha). Gilliam’s film is set to star Robert Duvall as Quixote and Ewan McGregor as the modern-day businessman who finds himself in Renaissance Spain with an insane(?) old man who thinks he’s a Knight-Errant.
Silver’s studio adaptation, on the other hand, is being sold as “a Pirates of Caribbean-style swashbuckling version of a story in which we discover that Don Quixote isn’t crazy and that there is, in fact, a fantasy world.” [Pajiba]
That’s what Prince of Persia was sold as, and we all saw how that turned out. At least that was an adaptation of a video game. This, on the other hand, is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written, if not the best. Beer me strength.
Do we need a studio version of Cervantes’ vision?