Financing Collapses For Terry Gilliam’s ‘Don Quixote,’ Won’t Be Able To Try Again Until September 2011; ‘Time Bandits’ Going 3D?

Is it back to square one for Terry Gilliam’s troubled and long-gestating, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” project?

Sounds very much like it and evidently the financial problems are much worse than the understated “hiccup” that Gilliam admitted to earlier this summer.

“The financing collapsed about a month and a half ago,” the director told audiences on Saturday at the Deauville American Film Festival where Variety was in attendance. “I shouldn’t be here. The plan was to be shooting ‘Quixote’ right now.”

Still, despite the new setbacks — and there was a rather gigantic one in the early aughts painfully captured in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s 2002 doc “Lost in La Mancha” — Gilliam promises to keep moving forward and hopes to secure new monies. “Robert Duvall is Quixote, Ewan McGregor is also there, and we are looking for new financing right now,” he said. “‘Don Quixote’ gives me something to look forward to, always. Maybe the most frightening thing is to actually make the film.” But if he does get financing, the film still might be a long way off.

Mister T’s Movie Click has a few more quotes (forgive the Google translation, and thanks to the commenter who tipped us off to this article) from the director from Deauville in which he reveals that even if financing were to appear immediately, his commitment to a production of Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust” at the English National Opera in London next year will keep him from getting to the film until September 2011 at the earliest. “My problem is that I can not shoot next spring because I will create an opera. Suddenly I could not do the film before September.”

This confirms shooting won’t commence in the fall as we’d hoped and the status of the film is still up in the air. Hopefully Gilliam, who still doesn’t believe in the “curse of Quixote,” will remain as tenacious as ever. But even he, who has suffered the death of his lead actor mid-way through filming, has a breaking point. “Whoever that guy was,” Gilliam said alluding to a younger version of himself at the Film Festival where he was being lauded, “I envy him, because he had a lot more energy than I do now.” Ironically, the Don Quixote support site is far less driven, dynamic and vociferous than “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus” site was, even though he needs them now more than ever (that site is now down and AWOL). Perhaps because there’s no tragic-romantic James Dean-like star cut down in his prime attached to this project? Ah, fair weather fans.

But, ever ambitious, the director reveals he does have a couple of other ideas kicking around only saying, “I have two scenarios I think I can resurrect because they cost more than $ 100 million (laughs)!.” Previously in the same interview, Gilliam said that financing is easy only if your film costs $10 or $100 million dollars; for mid-level productions it’s more difficult to find backers. So could Gilliam’s next project end up being an expensive studio film? Well, he was approached to direct the first ‘Harry Potter’ film by JK Rowling so who knows, for Gilliam, stranger things have happened….

But for now Gilliam fans can possibly look forward to a 3D version of “Time Bandits.” The director reveals, “We are in discussions to make a 3D version of the film ‘[Time] Bandits.’ That will not change anything in the film itself will remain the same and if I think it serves as some passages in ‘Alice [In Wonderland’], the 3D should work well. Anyway, I’ll have fun with it!”