After more than two decades, Terry Gilliam’s passion project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is finally seeing the light of day at Cannes. For real. And while that’s good news, it wouldn’t be a normal day for this film without a healthy dose of bad news, too.
As we recently noted, Gilliam’s film had been added to the Cannes lineup as its closing night offering, but a last second challenge by disgruntled ex-producer Paul Branco put that in jeopardy. Branco’s claim is that he still owns the rights and not Gilliam, and any premiering of the film must go through him. A judge has decided otherwise and now ‘Quixote’ can proceed ahead with its debut.
On the other hand, the film’s long-term prospects are in question. Amazon Studios has pulled out and won’t be giving it a domestic release. Given all of the problems it has had one can hardly argue with them, and as I’ve said before it was unlikely to earn much here. Fortunately the international release is still on, and if it has a strong premiere maybe another distributor will want to bring it stateside.
