Does this sound like a legal firm or what? In the wake of Heath Ledger's unexpected death, director Terry Gilliam has chosen to fill the actor's role in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" with not one but three replacements: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. The development was first reported by Ain't It Cool News in its typical heavy-breathing fashion; other media outlets soon chipped in more details.
Well, this is typical Gilliam, isn't it? Faced with yet another filmmaking cataclysm, he saves his creative bacon not by limiting his options but tripling them. "Parnassus," co-written with the filmmaker by Charles McKeown -- the two previously collaborated on "The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen" -- originally cast Ledger as Tony, a mysterious stranger who arrives at the traveling carnival of wonders run by Christopher Plummer's title character and is altered by stepping through a magic mirror. In Gilliam's revamp, the three new actors will play the "transformed" versions of Tony, leaving open the possibility that their performances will stand as a sort of tribute to the late actor.
For Depp, it means he finally gets to be in a Terry Gilliam movie other than "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- you may recall that "The Man Who Killed Quixote" didn't turn out so well.
Regardless, I now await "Parnassus" with a kind of fascinated dread. Gilliam's last film, "Tideland," was nearly unwatchable and one of his worst. The one before that, "The Brothers Grimm," was splattery and dank and a mess, and I rather liked it -- not least the quietly alert performance of the bookish Jacob Grimm by a young actor trying to break out of the hunk-of-the-week sweepstakes. His name was Heath Ledger.
