Heath Ledger in Doctor Parnassus
Austrian website DVD-forum.at nabbed four stills from Terry Gilliam’s upcoming feature The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a.k.a. Heath Ledger’s last film. The film will premiere at Cannes, but the production company behind Parnassus has been seeking a distribution deal ahead of the French fest.
You’d think major buyers would be fighting over the property, but like any Gilliam film, it looks like it’s going to be difficult to market. Insiders at an industry screening in Hollywood last week told EW:
All of the major independent buyers in town packed Hollywood’s DGA theater for the screening, and while most left feeling a bit befuddled (as one often does coming out of a Gilliam feature) the consensus was that the movie is better than expected.
Not the glowing review that anyone involved was looking for, I’m sure.
EW also reports that Heath does in fact appear throughout the two-hour film with Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, and Jude Law taking over the role of crooked philanthropist Tony in dream sequences. The question, however, remains: Is trying to sell the film pre-Cannes more a desperation move than just an aggressive marketing strategy?
The Hollywood Reporter suggests that the sales reps Cinetic Media are seeking “a studio-level deal with studio-level prices” and hoping to use the Cannes premiere to launch the marketing campaign. Of course, that all depends on who is buying and when. If the film isn’t marketable beyond the “Heath Ledger’s final performance” angle, then we’re in for either a quiet release or one of the most tasteless marketing campaigns we’ve been subject to in years.
This is going to be interesting to watch. What do you think?
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