Gilliam’s ‘cursed’ Don Quixote film delayed again in rights battle

IT HAS been 20 years in the making and has been described as the most illfated production in cinema history.

Just when it looked like Terry Gilliam’s film about Don Quixote was going to be released, on its eighth attempt, the Monty Python director’s labour of love hit another last-minute legal snag. Yesterday, a Paris appeals court was asked to rule on who owns the director’s rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Gilliam, 77, or Paulo Branco, 69, the film’s erstwhile producer.

The film has spawned countless articles and a documentary, Lost in La Mancha, about its disastrous production, as well as rumours that the entire project was cursed. But last autumn, Gilliam announced that the film was in the can. However, Branco threw a spanner in the works over film rights.

A French court had earlier heard that the men fell out after the Portuguese producer failed to raise the promised €16million (£14million) budget for the film in 2016. When Gilliam found other backers for the film last year, Branco sought to block it in the courts.

“In most of Gilliam’s films, the budget exploded. But I soon understood that he harboured a deep hatred for producers,” Branco told Le Monde.

Benjamin Sarfati, Gilliam’s lawyer, said: “[Branco] is brutal, charismatic, autocratic and untrustworthy. He has left many companies in the lurch. He didn’t have the money.”

Branco claims that Alfama Films, his French-based company, owns the rights, rather than Gilliam.

Judges ruled last May that the new production could go ahead, but that Branco held the rights to the movie. Gilliam said yesterday: “His demands are laughable, absurd. He is trying to make as much money as he possibly can from a film he did not produce.”

Branco said he hoped that “the film will be released one day – films are made to be seen – but legally.”

The court is due to make its ruling on June 15.