JohnnyDepp-Zone.com

Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his work in The Dark Knight, but his final film, Terry Gilliam’s Faustian fantasy The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, still has no distributor in the United States and no release date. Ledger passed away during filming, and his role was later completed by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. “A number of U.S. buyers during the summer and early fall were said to be interested in acquiring stateside rights–Lionsgate and Overture reportedly were among the potential suitors–but word of a potential deal quickly quieted down,” writes Stephen Zeitchik for Reuters.uk. The allegorical material presents marketing challenges, since Doctor Parnassus is not likely to appeal to the same audience that loved The Dark Knight. Zeitchik does expect the film to secure a U.S. distributor soon, probably a mini-major or larger indie, but the fact that it will have taken more than six months to get a distributor for a film with Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law “speaks to the difficulty of selling art-house films to the domestic market.”

The Zone thanks Emma for posting the Doctor Parnassus news; you can read more about its search for a distributor on the Zone’s News & Views forum. –Part-Time Poet