Posthumous Ledger

So many questions. So much speculation. The past 72 hours are filled with bereavement, well spoken tributes and a little bit of nonsense. For the curious: here is a sampling of info that puts his untimely death into perspective.

Fact: Warner Bros.’s marketing people are scratching their heads.

“Hollywood has not seen a high-profile star’s death in the middle of a movie in some time. When Brandon Lee was killed in 1993 on the set of “The Crow,” Mr. Kingman said, the filmmakers “were very clever and creative and completed the movie with a double, and that movie turned out to be successful enough to entice people to do a sequel.” (It made more than $50 million at the domestic box office.) River Phoenix died of an overdose in 1993, halfway through making “Dark Blood,” which was abandoned. John Candy died in 1994 with a third of his scenes left in “Wagons East,” which was finished after the insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement.”

Fact: Online class: WB’s The Dark Knight official site.

Fact: Why the meds? The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus co-star Christopher Plummer speaks to EW.

“We’re all a bit befuddled at the moment. It’s so sad. Heath did have a terrible, lingering bug in London, and he couldn’t sleep at all. We all — I thought he’d probably got walking pneumonia, which they seem to think he had. Of course I don’t really know, but that’s the latest”.

Fact: People are stupid. See: Discount Ledger.

Fact: Tabloid Media are stupid. See: Depp replacing Ledger.

Fact: When did Ledger discover his range? A.O Scott looks back at Ledger’s work.

“Mr. Ledger’s work will outlast the frenzy. But there should have been more. Instead of being preserved as a young star eclipsed in his prime, he should have had time to outgrow his early promise and become the strange, surprising, era-defining actor he always had the potential to be“.

Fantasy: If Doctor Parnassus is an official halt then a Heath Ledger documentary might be in the works? Terry Gilliam has had (on all his recent films) a documentary crew filmming the behind-the-scenes stuff – and this is the second time Heath worked with Terry.

Fact: Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for Batman in 1989.

2009: Heath had confirmed that he might have had the time of his life on filming The Dark Knight. Posthumous nominations not out of the question.