Heath Ledger's role in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus will be completed with the help of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.
When Heath Ledger passed away on January 22, he left behind a pair of unfinished films. Shooting was essentially done on Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight with Ledger's work as the Joker pretty much in the can. That film is holding firm to its July 18 release. But Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus , Ledger's second collaboration with the director after The Brothers Grimm , was in the midst of filming and had to shut down when Ledger died. But Gilliam has vowed to complete the film and to keep Ledger's final performance intact. Although Gilliam has never faced a tragedy like this on a film before, he's no stranger to production setbacks. On Brazil , the studio took the film away from him and tried to release their cut with a "happy ending." More recently, he had to scrap his dream project of bringing Don Quixote to the screen when his star Jean Rochefort got ill, and severe weather damaged sets and prevented shooting. (A chronicle of the Quixote debacle is recorded in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. ) But Gilliam is ever inventive and the solution he has apparently come to is to have a trio of actors -- Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell -- complete Ledger's role. Their rumored participation has been confirmed.
The Hollywood Reporter today published this from a public statement released by the film's producers: "Since the format of the story allows for the preservation of his entire performance, at no point will Heath's work be modified or altered through the use of digital technology. Each of the parts played by Johnny, Colin and Jude is representative of the many aspects of the character that Heath was playing." Well that definitely sounds intriguing. Depp previously worked with Gilliam on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and was shooting with Gilliam on the Quixote project when it shut down. But neither Law nor Farrell have worked with Gilliam before. I hope the film will be a fitting cap to Ledger's brief but brilliant career. And for Gilliam's sake, I hope that it does get finished. He's one of the most imaginative directors working today and it's a shame he hasn't been able to make more films.
