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Results for posts tagged "deaths" on Defamer Australia.
Sad news from London this morning reveals that Anthony Minghella, who in 1996 won an Oscar for directing The English Patient, has passed away. He was 54. Minghella's death was confirmed this morning by his agent Judy Daish; no further details on the cause are currently available.
And so, with two days to let the devastating news sink in, Variety now asks the inevitable question of what's to be done with Heath Ledger's final projects--the wrapped The Dark Knight, and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Morbidly running through the history of productions faced with surprise cast deaths during shooting (apparently CGI has now taken over for stunt doubles and very low lighting as the re-animating technique of choice), the report then addresses the issue of how such misfortune might cast marketing campaigns in an unpleasant new light. As we pointed out on Tuesday, The Dark Knight's focuses squarely and gruesomely on Ledger's chillingly effective performance as The Joker, providing an unwelcome creative predicament for WB's marketing czar:
[WB marketing head Sue] Kroll will likely have to move quickly to rejigger the studio's current phase of the marketing campaign for "Dark Knight," focusing on Ledger's Joker character. This phase of the campaign had been set to run until March.
Some upsetting new evidence has emerged in the Heath Ledger case: Along with the prescription drugs that were found in the apartment, police also recovered "a rolled up $20 bill with narcotic residue on it", and "several drug packets containing an unknown substance". This was all apparently listed in the original police report, and sent to their labs for testing. [wcbstv.com]
Let's just get on with this. A round-up of where we are so far with yesterday's shocking death of Heath Ledger at age 28:
So how's The Dark Knight for goodbyes? Give us anything - Brokeback Mountain's heartache, Candy's cautionary tale of - gulp - heroin addiction, even Casanova (OK, not Casanova) - but not the The Dark Knight. Not that disfigured creep in the trenchcoat. Heath's last words to us can't be a menacingly growled, "It's all...part of the plan". His last note, not "Why so serious?" scrawled across a theatrical one-sheet in fingerpainted blood. Warner Bros. has issued this statement in response to his death:
Though pronounced dead at 3:45pm local time (7:45am AEDT), it took nearly three hours for the NYPD to survey the scene and ambulances to finally, morbidly, carry the body of Heath Ledger out the front door of his Broome Street apartment, currently on its way to the morgue.
As unexpected as Heath Ledger's death of an apparent overdose has been to anyone currently scouring the web for every incremental update on the still-unfolding tragedy (does knowing whether or not Mary-Kate Olsen owns that apartment actually help anyone make sense of the situation?), a "close friend" tells UsMagazine.com that the actor had been struggling with his sobriety and that things were "very dark": "This is terrible and I'm in shock. But to tell you the truth... we saw it coming." Meanwhile, the HuffPo has already identified the tackiest reaction to Ledger's death, courtesy of the MSNBC reporter who remarked "In a lot of ways, this reminds me -- we've almost had a dress rehearsal for this with Owen Wilson." In fairness, however, the clip of the remark does reveal she did couch that statement with two "almosts." [UsMagazine.com]
The last known photograph of Heath Ledger alive was taken in London Saturday night on the set of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the latest project from wildly talented yet notoriously cursed director Terry Gilliam. The auteur, who got his start as part of the esteemed Monty Python troupe, has suffered perhaps the worst streak of luck for any director not named Uwe Boll. His pockmarked career will, unfortunately, likely be remembered more for his role on big budget disasters like The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm (with Ledger in lead) than it will for creative triumphs like Brazil and The Fisher King. And then, there was the sad story of Gilliam's Don Quixote project, which was felled by floods and bad casting and turned into the total downer documentary Lost In La Mancha. As for the fate of The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (not to be confused with Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium), we are awaiting word.
Posted by Clem Bastow at 8:57 AM on January 23, 2008
We're just as shocked as you are likely to be by this news, which is beginning to filter through Agencies.
Some reports have it as a drug overdose, but there is no official word yet.
Australian actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence, a New York Police Department spokesman says.Defamer Australia's thoughts are with his family and friends and we hope someone is looking after little Matilda if this is all true.The celebrity website TMZ said Ledger, 28, was found dead in his bed in one of his residences in Soho by his housekeeper at 3.35pm New York time (0735 AEDT) today.
Law enforcement sources said they believe it was not a crime, TMZ said.
