EXCLUSIVE: Terry Gilliam‘s biblical comedy Carnival: At The End Of Days has been boarded by prolific Italian producer and entrepreneur Andrea Iervolino, whose credits include Ferrari, Maserati: The Brothers and To The Bone.
Iervolino is due to produce and help finance the film and is heading to the European Film Market in Berlin this month to discuss the project with potential buyers and will look to add a sales agent while there. The aim is to shoot in Italy as soon as April.
According to Iervolino, the project will reflect Gilliam’s customary ambition, scope and creative vision. He describes it to us as “an epic and visionary work” and a “live-action film that makes unprecedented use of CGI”: “Carnival is an extraordinarily complex film for an independent production. It is a project that blends live-action aesthetics with an unprecedented amount of CGI. It is, without a doubt, one of the most expensive independent projects ever undertaken in cinematic history. However, I firmly believe it is a magnificent work of art that the world deserves to see.”
Iervolino will produce with Gilliam’s daughter Amy Gilliam from a script by the Brazil, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and 12 Monkeys filmmaker and Christopher Brett Bailey.
In previous press, former Python Gilliam has described the film thusly: “This is a simple tale of God wiping out humanity for fucking up his beautiful garden Earth. There’s only one character who’s trying to save humanity and that’s Satan, because without humanity he’s lost his job and he’s an eternal character and so to live without a job is terrible. So he finds some young people and he tries to convince God that these young people are the new Adam and Eve. God still gets to wipe out humanity. It’s a comedy.”
In an interview last year, Gilliam noted Johnny Depp, Jeff Bridges, Adam Driver and Jason Momoa as among cast being lined up for the project. Depp — who previously appeared in Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) as well as multiple films by producer Iervolino — is set to play Satan, who in a reversal of roles, finds himself trying to save humanity in the face of a punitive God who would be played by Bridges. The castings aren’t yet official or signed, however.
Gilliam’s last film was 2018 pic The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a film he tried to make for more than two decades. Let’s see if Carnival can come together in quicker order.
Iervolino’s The Andrea Iervolino Company recently completed filming on Maserati: The Brothers, starring Jessica Alba, Anthony Hopkins, Andy Garcia and Michele Morrone.
