It looked for a little while like Heath Ledger’s final film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, would fall completely prey to the Terry Gilliam curse. Finally finished despite the death of its lead, the film was now facing an uphill battle in finding distribution. While the movie has names – Ledger was replaced by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell – it also garnered extremely mixed reviews (not surprising for late period Gilliam, it seems).
Variety is reporting that Sony is probably going to pick up the film in the United States, and likely release it through Sony Pictures Classics. The movie already has distribution in foreign territories, and it’ll be released overseas by the end of the year.
The Variety story seems to downplay the film’s commercial prospects and play up its home video catalog value. I imagine that the initial weekend will get a bump from Ledger-fueled curiosity, but nothing I’ve heard about the film leads me to believe that it’s got a commercial bone in its body. Which means if you’re reading this and you don’t live in New York or LA… well, at least you’ll be able to see it on Blu-Ray.