The late, great Heath Ledger may have a film career that doesn't end on the dark and sinister note that it would if this summer's The Dark Knight were to be his last screen appearance. People has a message from Christopher Plummer, Ledger's co-star in the still-in-production film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which says that director Terry Gilliam is struggling to find a way to transfer Ledger's unfinished performance into another form.
Despite earlier reports that the director might shelve the $30 million production, Gilliam, whom Plummer describes as "terribly saddened" by Ledger’s death is "trying to work out at this moment how to continue on. Fortunately, because the film deals with magic, there is a way, perhaps, of turning Heath into other people and then, using stills and I think they call it CGI…
"Terry was a very good friend [of Heath's]," adds Plummer. "He very wants to go on with the movie, and I can very much understand why. Because he wants to dedicate it to Heath, of course."
Ledger would have appreciated the show-must-go-on mentality, says his co-star. "He was terribly likeable and obviously enormously talented…and the combination was terrific. It's such a shame these things have to happen to the good ones."
There have also been rumors of having Johnny Depp step into the role Ledger has vacated, having worked with Gilliam before in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but nothing official as yet.
It's worth noting that Gilliam has had some extraordinarily bad luck in movie-making this last decade. The film Lost in La Mancha was going to be a simple behind-the-scenes package for the DVD of his Don Quixote movie, but it wound up being a documentary on the complete disaster that the production became, forcing the project on the shelf.
