Terry Gilliam's long-gestating swan song, “Carnival at the End of Days,” is once again in limbo, development hell, whatever you care to call it.
Just a few months ago, it looked like the legendary filmmaker had finally secured the $30M budget he needed to get the project off the ground. Italian producer Guglielmo Marchetti even confirmed that the financing had been locked, with the shoot slated for April at Rome’s iconic Cinecittà studios — a massive production said to involve over 3,000 people.
And yet, April came and went. No cameras rolled. No production updates. In a little-seen interview, Gilliam bluntly admitted that he’s once again come up short on funding. “I don’t know if anybody will ever fund it,” he says.
The most recent update, in a chat from four days ago, he mentions how he wants to make his apocalyptic film, but that people are too busy with Iran and Israel to finance it, or something like that.
Originally announced as a high-concept apocalyptic comedy with a loaded ensemble — Adam Driver, Johnny Depp, Jeff Bridges, Jason Momoa, Asa Butterfield, and Emma Laird — Carnival is classic Gilliam: ambitious, unhinged, and nearly impossible to finance. Depp was set to play Satan, with Butterfield and Laird as Adam and Eve.
Co-written with newcomer Christopher Brett Bailey, 35, ‘Carnival’ was being shopped around earlier this year at the EFM in Berlin, where it reportedly attracted attention, but no deal materialized.
The reality is this: Gilliam hasn’t had a real commercial hit in decades. His last film, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” (2018), barely made a dent after nearly 25 years of development hell. As much as that film was a minor creative return to form, its financial failure likely scared off any new investors.
It's easy to forget just how essential Gilliam once was to cinema’s rebellious spirit; a true renegade voice who went toe-to-toe with studios and gave us memorable works like “Brazil,” “12 Monkeys,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and, of course, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
At 84, Gilliam might not get another shot like ‘Carnival.’ And that’s a damn shame.