Here it is, at long last , the desperately awaited first trailer for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. You will find it embedded below the break. The UK official site is open too, though at the moment all it contains is a logotype, as above, and a registration box.

When you watch the trailer, not only will you be given a vague intro to the central plot, which is something most coverage has neglected to express at all, you’ll also be given a good look at Heath Ledger as Tony, and glimpses of Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law as… well, as Tony too. There are so many visual ideas in this trailer and they come by so quickly that you really should decide to play it a second time, love it or hate it, just to give it a real chance.

Here’s the trailer, which you can also see on Yahoo. The sooner a HD version arrives the better, I say.

Of course, I’m absolutely in love with it. These are scenes I’ve known about since I first read the screenplay, years ago, but most of which I’ve never seen even a glimpse of until now. More than ever I’m eagerly anticipating what Gilliam is suggesting is the greatest work of his entire career.

The good man himself will be giving an audience at the BFI Southbank one week from now, and I’ll be sure to report back anything and everything of interest.

Seeing Gilliam work with CG in such an expansive and unfettered fashion is absolutely fascinating. There’s reportedly a wider range of aesthetics in the Imaginarium sequences than on display here, but even these are gobsmacking. I’d say Jude Law in a Looney Tunes world of splitting ladders is a favourite of mine so far, but it wasn’t easy to choose.

But its the mainly stuff outside of the Imaginarium shots that really blew me away. The flashback to Christopher Plummer’s Parnassus meeting with Tom Waits’ Old Nick looks like an incredibly handsome and well mounted sequence.

This is the UK trailer, cut by Lionsgate for our release of the film over here in Blighty, due this October. Expect to see variants from the various different distributors handling the film around the world.