After all of the hype and the incredibly long wait, Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” came and went with only a bit of an impact. The film earned mixed-to-positive reviews, but it really just marked the end of a long filmmaking journey for Gilliam. But it’s been five years since the release of that film and people are ready to see what the filmmaker has up his sleeve next. Well, it appears Gilliam has a couple of things he’d like to do, including the long-discussed film, “The Carnival at the End of Days.”
In an upcoming interview with our own Marshall Shaffer, Terry Gilliam spoke about a couple of the projects he currently has in development. Perhaps the one that people know best is the feature, “Defective Detective,” which he briefly talked about back in 2019. The film had been in development for years prior, but it seemed like, at one point, it was possibly heading toward a streaming future. Apparently, that has changed, but Gilliam is excited about another project that seems closer to becoming a reality.
“I don’t know what to do, ‘Defective Detective’ is the film I really would like to make. But the script lies in the bowels of Paramount Pictures, and I don’t know how to get it out,” he said. “We’ve been trying to, but we’ve not succeeded. It’s that weird situation where a script’s there, and they’re not going to make it, but they don’t want to let it go just in case somebody makes it and is successful. I don’t know how that’ll go. I’ve written a new thing with a new co-writer called ‘The Carnival at the End of Days.’ It’s about the end of the world, folks!”
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Even though ‘Carnival’ takes place during the apocalypse, it’s not connected to the rumored project he had in development about the Four Horsemen. Though, those mythical figures are in the new film.
“The Four Horsemen are in ‘The Carnival at the End of Days!’ But no, it’s a simple little tale about the world we live in and God deciding to wipe out humanity because we destroyed his beautiful garden,” Gilliam explained. “It’s a comedy! And there’s one person trying to stop this from happening, and it turns out to be Satan. Because without human beings, he’s out of a job. And he’s eternal, and to be stuck in eternity knowing you’re out of a job is pretty bad.”
Obviously, it’s far too soon to know if/when we might see “The Carnival at the End of Days.” Though, it does appear that this is the project Gilliam would like to work on next. Hopefully, it doesn’t linger in development nearly as long as ‘Don Quixote.’
-Additional reporting by Marshall Shaffer