Terry Gilliam is to finally shoot his long-awaited, repeatedly abandoned Don Quixote film after Christmas, the film-maker has told the Wrap. However, the movie which may finally find its way into cinemas appears to be a very different beast to the one which was famously washed out by flash floods and freak storms in 1999, a disaster catalogued in the documentary Lost in La Mancha.

For a start, the plot has been completely revised. The new version no longer sees a 21st-century advertising executive - the role was initially set to be played by Johnny Depp - travelling back in time to 17th-century Spain, where he meets Quixote and becomes involved in his adventures after the Don mistakes him for Sancho Panza. Instead, it is set entirely in the modern day and maintains a self-reflexive theme in which Gilliam references his own failure to make the film the first time around.

“I keep incorporating my own life into it and shifting it,” said the veteran film-maker. “The basic underlying premise of that the version Johnny was involved in was that he actually was going to be transported back to the 17th century, and now it all takes place now, it’s contemporary. It’s more about how movies can damage people.”

Added Gilliam: “Our main character actually made a Don Quixote movie a lot earlier in his history, and the effect it had on many people wasn’t very nice. Some people go mad, some people turn to drink, some people become whores.”

The director of Brazil and Twelve Monkeys said he was not quite ready to believe his decade-and-a-half-long mission to bring the cod-chivalrous hero of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s famous novel to cinemas was almost over. “I’ve done it so many times — or not done it so many times — I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “However, I’m behaving as if it’s all going to happen as planned.”

It has certainly been a long road to production. Gilliam first said the project, which initially starred Depp, Jean Rochefort and Vanessa Paradis, was to reshoot in 2008, nearly a decade after the events documented in Lost in La Mancha. Two years later it emerged that Ewan McGregor would replace Depp, with Robert Duvall set to step into Rochefort’s shoes as the Don himself.

The cast for the new version has not yet been revealed, but Gilliam said his producers were currently in negotiations with a number of actors.