Sony Pictures Classics is the ‘Doctor’ in the House

IFC managed to grab some pics, but Sony Pictures Classics have pretty much gobbled up everything of interest from the Cannes film festival. Variety reports that the distrib co. will be adding one more title to the mix – Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group is in “advanced talks” to pick up The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and have confirmed what The Playlist had speculated on just the other day, that a Holiday release is highly likely.

Way too much has been dedicated to the cloudy future of Terry Gilliam’s omnibus, shape-shifting fantasy pic. In the history books, Parnassus will be dubbed as Heath’s final perf and a miraculous rescue on the filmmaker’s part, but in my books this is a nudge better than The Brothers Grimm disaster. I’ll admit to having less patience for big-scale films at the tale end of a festival, but that Cannes viewing felt like someone handed me some LSD, and once the effects started to kick in, it then changed into a sedative.

Written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown, the modern-day fantasy adventure centers on Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who has the gift of guiding the imaginations of others. With his travelling theater troupe, Parnassus offers audience members the chance to transcend reality by passing through a magical mirror. Tony steps into three different dimensions, each transporting him into a new world; worlds which are inhabited by Depp, Law, and Farrell.