Johnny Depp was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Rome Film Festival. He also screened his second film as a director, “Modi,” which originally premiered at San Sebastian in September.
While at Rome, Depp told an Italian outlet that among the projects he’s currently working on, there are two films as a director and two as an actor, including Terry Gilliam’s long-gestating “The Carnival at the End of Days.”
You won't get rid of me so soon. As an actor I should hopefully be playing Satan in a film directed by Terry Gilliam, I hope the film can see the light of day.
This past May, Gilliam claimed he had found funding for ‘Carnival.’ We already know that Depp would indeed be playing Satan and that the rest of the cast was composed of Jeff Bridges, Adam Driver and Jason Momoa. A January 2025 shoot was being eyed. (via Premiere).
No surprise, given the filmmaker’s history, and five months later, Gilliam told Czech media he didn’t have the sufficient funds needed to make ‘Carnival,’ and that he would have to creatively compromise his vision to make it happen (via Novinky).
I don't have all of the money for it right now. I would have to compromise some of my ideas. Which I don't want to. I’m angry with myself for not being able to do it. Which is not always a bad thing. When I get angry, some interesting ideas come out [..] Maybe I’ll start shooting it soon, albeit with a smaller budget.
Gilliam went on to add that he was “negotiating with the Saudis” to bankroll the project. He’s willing to shoot ‘Carnival’ in Saudi Arabia if it means they are able to fund the whole thing. The lure of having Depp in the cast is no doubt what interests them the most.
In a recent French interview, Gilliam revealed that the budget for ‘Carnival’ would have to be around $30 million dollars.
The last time Gilliam directed a feature was 2018’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” a film he was trying to make for more than two decades. It came and went without much excitement, although I thought it was his, de facto, best film since the late ‘90s. The lack of commercial success on ‘Don Quixote’ is essentially the reason why Gilliam can’t find funding for his next projects. His films of the last 25 years have been both critical and commercial misfires.