It’s weirdly ironic that it’s a Terry Gilliam film which Heath Ledger was working on before his untimely death. Gilliam’s projects are always fraught with peril, and whenever he announces the start of work a new movie it’s even money whether or not he’ll ever actually finish it, or if he does finish, whether it’ll come out as brilliant or Munchausen.
At least it looks like his movie with Ledger, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus will be completed, and now we may know who will be stepping in to shoot Heath’s remaining scenes. AICN claims that Gilliam is bringing in not one, but three actors to film the remainder of Heath Ledger’s pages. Their names are: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell.
Depp has been rumored to be in the running for weeks now, but if you’re going to bring in one guy I guess why not go crazy and bring in three? Especially if you can bring in three actors as talented as these.
In case you haven’t heard there’s a moment in Parnassuss, which has already been shot with Heath Ledger, in which his character falls through a magic mirror. Rumor has it that Gilliam’s plan is that when the character comes out of the mirror, he’ll look like someone else. Apparently there’s more than one moment like this in the film, because now we’re getting four different actors in the role instead of just one. Maybe there’s a lot of back and forth with this groovy magic mirror.
Whatever scripting they’re doing to justify it, I can’t imagine them doing any better than these thee actors. Getting the movie finished using the best possible talent seems to me, to be the best way to pay tribute to Ledger’s work, which is perhaps how Terry was able to talk so many big names into doing it.
