Austrian website, DVD-Forum.at has four gorgeous new photos from Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, featuring Heath Ledger in his final starring role. Though the film gets its official premiere in Cannes in a couple of weeks, Entertainment Weekly reports on a screening held exclusively for buyers interested in a distribution deal.
Although Ledger died during production on Parnassus and was replaced by three actors — Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell — one source in attendance says that the late Oscar winner indeed appears throughout the film as Tony, a crooked philanthropist. His three replacements, meanwhile, only pop up in dream sequences. (Farrell’s sequence is the longest, says one person who attended the screening.) The two-hour film apparently features amazing visuals, but the storyline is rather complex, centering on Christopher Plummer as Dr. Parnassus, a man who runs a traveling sideshow with his daughter, a young barker, and a sidekick, played by Verne Troyer. Tom Waits plays the Devil, with whom Parnassus makes a Faustian bargain, and Ledger’s character joins the troupe after they find him hanging from his neck under a London bridge.
3 more stills after the cut.
