Terry Gilliam is ready to take a steam-powered journey into the the alternate world of 1884, with a steampunky story written (and soon to be directed) by Gilliam's protégé Tim Ollive. Watch these amazing animation/puppet tests by Ollive himself.


Variety is reporting that while Gilliam's latest project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has died out due to lack of funds (again!), the director has found a new project to co-produce with Ollive, 1884. The film takes place in 1884, even though it's supposed to have been made in 1848, in a sly reference to George Orwell's 1984, written in 1948.

The steampunk adventure is reportedly "a story of outstanding heroism in the face of deception, subterfuge and treachery. Conjuring up the belief that it was made forty years before film was even invented, 1884: Yesterdays Future tells of a future that might have been but never was."


The movie will mix puppets, miniatures, CG animation and fuse the mouths and eyes of actors onto the the little heads of the puppets. Also it's apparently going to utilize four voices from the cast of Monty Python, though we don't know which actors Gilliam and Ollive will be using just yet.

To get a better idea of what this project will look like, check out these teaser trailers that were made by a special effects forum in France. According to the youtube information page, the teasers were directed by Ollive and seem to utilize the same CG mouths and eyes technique described above. As of right now, no release date has been set.

[via Coming Soon]