Last week we did a fairly in-depth piece noting why all old reports on Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus” — including the main one by The Hollywood Reporter, and everyone one else and our own — were wrong and or incorrect.
According to the U.K. publicists for the production
that feature Heath Ledger’s final onscreen performance, the film had a) never been shopped to any U.S. distributors yet, b) the film was coming out in the Fall and c) the film would be completed in April.
These points all seems to jive with very recent information. For one, in a interview with the U.K. press today, Gilliam said, “the film will come out in the Autumn.”
In fact, Gilliam took a swipe at the original Risky Biz story from THR, “There’s this story running round that has absolutely no basis in truth at all, it started from a little blog and it’s all over the place but it’s good, it gives us free publicity” (the original report said the film could be in trouble and U.S. distributors were having cold feet).
For two, the newly launched ‘Parnassus’ Twitter pagee says, the final four VFX shots in the film are done, and April is just one day away. The film is basically complete as they said it would be.
Gilliam sound proud of the final product. “The main thing is that it really works and that was what I was concerned about and I can say, hand on heart, that it’s really good. I just didn’t want to waste any moment of Heath in life or on screen and that’s ‘Parnassus’.”
In a recent Empire magazine feature that’s not online yet, the filmmaker revealed that the movie won’t be subtitled with “A Terry Gilliam film,” as most pictures are done historically. Instead, the subtitle will read, “A film by Heath Ledger And Friends.”
The director told Empire the project has changed from its original conception of being a “compendiums of all sorts of things that I’ve done before,” because of the way Ledger’s death dramatically affected it all (and he was replaced by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell). “The film isn’t exactly what we set out to make. [But] it might be a better one for it,” he said.
P.S. The Twitter feed now says the film has been completed. They also, umm.. misspell, Parnassus as “Parnassusis.” Uhh, intern much?
