By Terry Gilliam’s quest to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has run into countless stumbling blocks. First chronicled in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, Gilliam and others have suggested Don Quixote is back on track multiple times, but nothing solid has really materialized.
At least until now. Maybe.
Last month, Gilliam and Jim Jarmusch signed deals with Amazon’s production wing for various projects. Gilliam revealed to IndieWire that part of his deal with Amazon includes funding and a release strategy for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, making Amazon slightly less evil (but only just).
According to IndieWire, Amazon will partially fund The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, releasing it in theaters before making the movie available to stream online.
“Amazon and the like are interesting because they are all still in their formative stages,” Gilliam told IndieWire. “They’re not a bureaucracy that has been around for years like the studio system, and so they’re full of people that are open to new and fresh ideas. So it’s a good time to be working with people like that.”
Gilliam also told IndieWire that he had other potential projects for Amazon, including a two-and-a-half-hour feature film that may be stretched into a six-to-eight-episode streaming series. This is possibly a reference to The Defective Detective. Gilliam laughed maniacally when the project was brought up in the IndieWire interview, so yeah, probably The Defective Detective.
Rejoice, Gilliam fans. Two dead/not-quite-dead projects have a new lease on life. And if that doesn’t work out, Gilliam will at least some of that filthy Amazon lucre to swim in.
[via IndieWire]