Continuing the decades-long saga of Terry Gilliam trying to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote into an actual movie people can watch, Adam Driver is now set to star in the film along with Gilliam’s Monty Python buddy Michael Palin, /Film reports.
The most recent iteration of the movie was set to star Jack O’Connell and John Hurt. However, last year Hurt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, roughly the sixth insurmountable problem this production has encountered since Gilliam first tried to make it in 1998. (Thankfully, Hurt has recovered, but he’s no longer attached to the film.) Now, in the latest version of the project set to go before cameras in September, Driver will play the protagonist, Toby, and Palin will fill in for Hurt as the Don Quixote character. In addition to the ever-changing cast, Gilliam continues to switch up the story, which now will forgo the time travel elements discussed in 2014 in favor of a commentary on filmmaking itself.
According to the new synopsis, Driver will play Toby, a former film student who years ago shot a film adapting the story of Don Quixote in a small Spanish village. Now, Toby is “an arrogant publicist, libidinous and jaded.” While in Spain filming an ad, Toby goes in search of the village where he shot the movie and “discovers with horror that his little film has had terrible effects on this quiet place.” For example, “the old man who played Don Quixote (Palin) lost his mind, convinced in his delusion of being the real ‘Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.’” Of course the man who thinks he’s Don Quixote mistakes Toby for his squire, Sancho, and they go on an adventure where “damsels will be saved, jousts will be completed, and giants will be killed!”
That’s the plan anyway, until Driver and Palin are blown away by a tornado, leaving Gilliam no choice but to play every role himself—which is probably where this thing is headed.