Double your money, surely?

€œOh how they will love me when I€™m gone.€ said Orson Welles late in life, the great master ever nearing his Rosebud moment by then and feeling more than a little nostalgic over his past achievements and obviously bitter over how he wasn't been lauded at that time as one of the greats. He was proven right of course and in 2009, is regularly thought of as a visionary, born decades before his time and whose first film as a writer, director, producer and star in Citizen Kane is one of the very best films ever made. And with the media uproar and sudden sympathy for British "celeb" Jade Goody, it appears it's not just those who have actually achieved something in life who are given a higher stature when they are no longer with us, but also publicity whores, who tragically die young. And with rumors of a Jade Goody biopic being rushed out to captailiase on her new found fandom, I'm really struggling to work out how The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus has so far failed to pick up a U.S. distributor when it features the last performance of a truly great and popular actor. The Hollywood Reporter wrote last month that despite lots of early interest last Summer in Terry Gilliam's latest film, the movie has been rejected for a theatrical release by every distributor and it's looking more likely it will go straight to DVD. The movie only cost $20 million to make, less than a third of what The Dark Knighttook on it's FIRST DAY OF RELEASE! And no-one would argue against the fact The Dark Knight's hype and final box office gross was tragically fuelled by the loss of Ledger. The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus tells the story of a 1,000 year old travelling circus magician (Christopher Plummer) who makes a series of pacts with the devil (Tom Waits). Heath Ledger only managed to shoot a brief number of scenes in a supporting role as a traveling outsider before his passing and in an in-genius way to complete his part in his absence (he would walk through the mirror and be transformed into a different physicaility, like when they make a new Dr. Who), his character will be played at times by the marketable trio of Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp. But THR, via The Telegraph say...

"Even with the Ledger hook, a distributor would have a hard time with marketing...Gilliam has grown more experimental in recent years with such fare as Tideland and The Brothers Grimm ... retailing Dr Parnassus as a Ledger film risks running a word-of-mouth problem with general audiences who are not accustomed to that kind of material."

Ledger's name alone, surely equals double your money profit despite a title which won't connect with a mainstream audience. He is coming off an Academy Award for The Joker for heaven's sake. And we wanna see this not because of a morbid desire to watch a dead actor on screen but because it's the last time we can see him in a new picture. And everything we have seen from this movie looks amazing anyway, regardless. In death, Ledger is more marketable than he ever was alive. I can't believe they aren't banking on this one as a possible shrewd winner.