While we’re still waiting on a resolution to the saga of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, it seems that Terry Gilliam is turning his attention to his next film as he dusts off another long-gestating project in Mr. Vertigo.
According to The Playlist, Ralph Fiennes (Spectre, The Grand Budapest Hotel) has signed on to appear in the film, an adaptation of Paul Auster’s novel of the same name, which Gilliam has been working on since 2011.
The official Amazon description for the book reads:
“A dazzling, picaresque novel set in the late 1920s – the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone. Walter Claireborne Rawley, renowned nationwide as “Walt the Wonder Boy,” is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by a mysterious Hungarian Jew, Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. Master Yehudi brings Walt into a Kansas circus troupe consisting of Mother Sioux and Aesop, a young black genius. The vaudeville act takes them across a vast and vibrant country, through mythic Americana where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob. Walt’s rise to fame and fortune mirrors America’s own coming of age, and his resilience, like that of the nation, is challenged over and over and over again.”
Gilliam is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with former The Man Who Killed Don Quixote producer Paulo Branco over the distribution rights to the film. Last month, it was reported that Gilliam had lost control of the movie due to a ruling from the Paris Court of Appeal, but current producer Mariela Busuievsky subsequently refuted the claims. Either way, the film is without a UK and US distribution deal at present.
