Perhaps the greatest Movie That Never Was is The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the aborted Terry Gilliam film that starred Johnny Depp as Sancho Panza. The movie was in production but weather, delays and illness destroyed it; the upside is that the amazing documentary Lost in La Mancha came from it all.
Now Terry Gilliam is talking about reviving the film. Today I was at the Public Enemies press day in Beverly Hills and I asked Johnny Depp if Gilliam had approached him about coming back. Depp said they’ve talked, but things don’t look good.
‘I love Terry and I’d do personally anything the guy wants to do,’ Depp said. ‘The thing with Quixote is that my dance card is pretty nutty for the next couple of years, so I’d hate to put him in a position to wait for me. That would be wrong.’
But it’s not just the pending The Lone Ranger and Pirates 4 that make Depp hesitant about returning to La Mancha. ‘We went there and tried for something and whatever it was – the elements and whatever got up beneath us were there and were documented well in that film Lost in La Mancha. I don’t know if it’s right for me to go back there.’