Good Omens for Gilliam
Terry Gilliam raises hopesfor his long-mooted adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's novel Good Omens.
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Friday, 04, Jan 2008 04:52
Terry Gilliam has given new hopes to fans eager to see his long-mooted adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's novel Good Omens.
A film of the book - which tells of the unlikely partnership of an angel and a demon attempting to prevent the end of the world - has struggled to emerge from development hell for years with scheduling conflicts and funding troubles leaving it seemingly abandoned.
But talking to Empire, Gilliam explained there remains a good chance of the novel reaching the big screen, partly due to the success of recent Gaiman adaptation Stardust and the author's work on CGI hit Beowulf.
"I'm the only one who can make it, because that's what Neil and Terry have said. I'm the only one," the Monty Python member said.
"And I thought with Neil, with Stardust and with Beowulf and there's another one – an animated film, a Henry Selick thing he's written [Coraline], I was thinking he's really hot now, so maybe there's a chance. I mean it's such a wonderful book."
He added: "I think our script is pretty good, too. We did quite a few changes. We weren't as respectful as we ought to have been. But Neil's happy with it."
The director also confirmed that another long-lost project of his - The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - could also hit the big screen at some point.
Gilliam's take on Cervantes' classic novel - with Johnny Depp attached to star as a man mistaken for Quixote's companion Sancho Panza - was hampered by such problems that the abandonment of the shoot became the subject of the documentary Lost In La Mancha.
But according to the Twelve Monkeys helmer, producer Jeremy Thomas has "come the closest to getting it untangled from the legal swamp it was in".
"He's just gotta get all the paperwork done and then I call Mr Depp and see which pirate film he's still on," he added.