By Nick Venable | 7 years ago

There are some directors sauntering around Hollywood who seem to do their damnedest to make worthless films that somehow get them jobs on bigger projects, and then there’s the brilliant and highly creative Terry Gilliam, who has to fight tooth, nail, bullet, and cannonball to get his films off of the page and into theaters. And when his films do hit theaters, it’s almost assuredly a limited run in only the larger markets. It, like the question of life, may never be explained, but Gilliam will do his best with his upcoming pic The Zero Theorem, which has finally found distribution here in the U.S. through Amplify and Well Go USA Entertainment, who teamed up on this deal.

The companies plan on getting the film out to audiences at some point this summer, though a specific date hasn’t been assigned just yet. Following this release, there are plans for a Blu-ray and DVD release, but no mention of VOD yet, though it seems like that would be looped into all of this. While Amplify is new to the distribution game, Well Go USA has been big on putting out interesting indie films from all over the world, including the horror comedy Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead and the horrific thriller Killers, which is due out in the next few months.

Gilliam’s last film, 2009’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, was only released in around 600 theaters, but still brought in $7 million domestically. That’s a good sign that people will actually go and see Gilliam’s movies no matter what they’re about, but I guess candy colors and Christoph Waltz’s bald head are too freaky for mainstream distributors.

The film stars Waltz as Qohen Leth, a computer genius who enjoys being alone, despite the fact that he’s constantly distracted by existential thoughts and questions. He is tasked by a mysterious governmental being called Management (Matt Damon) to work on a super-secret project to determine the meaning, or un-meaning, of life. The burnt-down church that Qohen calls him is a revolving door of quirky characters, including possible love interest Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry), Management’s son Bob (Lucas Hedges), and Leth’s eccentric psychiatrist (Tilda Swinton), among others. But it is this group that reminds him what being human is all about, and that’s something a computer assignment could never tell him.

We’ve been waiting ages for this flick here at GFR, and we couldn’t be more pleased that it isn’t getting shoved to the back of a closet until someone figures out how to make it disappear completely. Check out the visually stunning first trailer below.