While in Finland for the Helsinki Metal Meeting recently, BraveWords.com learned that NIGHTWISH's feature length Imaginaerum film is currently working on post-production special effects, with an anticipated completion in early April. Plans include a possible screening at Cannes. Come August 8th, the band will debut the film to fans with a special showing at the Hartwell Arena. The 11,000 capacity arena has hosted previous Nightwish live gigs, but this would be the largest movie premier in Finnish history.

Imaginaerum Director Stobe Harju has checked in with the following update:

"Where should I begin. Much has happened since the last update, too much, to write you another one.

Last months have been a battle getting all the required visual effects into the film as they deserve to be made. As I'm writing this update, the people in Montreal are working hard on the visuals. Since we are still in this stage the teaser trailer and trailer edit have had to wait for a while.

As some of you might have seen from Twitter, the film has reached a picture lock. It means, that no more raw editing will be done for the film and all the shots have their final length so that the visual effects team can finalize them. Naturally, it doesn't stop there.

What we have done during the past month has been looking through the film and doing a list of all the adr (additional dialogue recording). In short. Dig out the script, watch the film, see where the lines can be improved or new lines added, mark them down, send them out, close the script, lock the bastard, get the actors to do some new lines, record them, mix and sync them over the old lines in the film and voilà we have the final top quality dialogue for the movie. Sounds mundane, but many of the films have improved greatly because of this procedure.

The soundtrack on Petri Alanko's desk is doing great. After the last edit for the film, there were many things that made the guy literally pull his hair out of his head. I guess it's sync issues mainly. Nevertheless, the band is very impressed of what they've heard so far and remember, there's only going to be a few original songs from Imaginaerum album because the rest will have a more cinematic nature to them. I've asked Petri to write an update specifically to you all who are reading this since I gather, you all are getting fairly bored reading my scribbles only.

As I was visiting Nightwish, Helsinki gig on last saturday with some friends, including Petri Alanko, I was pretty sure we got some shivering ideas of what you, the Nightwish fans, would like to hear in the film. Anyway, Nightwish was fantastic as always and I really got some kicks getting to see the old friends in the backstage once again. Emotional stuff.

As usual, saving the best for last is the obvious thing to do. The teaser trailer is on my desk at the moment, meaning that the editing for the raw version will begin shortly. This will take some time though, because the visual effects that should be in the teaser are still work in progress, there's the sound mixing and coloring to do for those parts of the film and therefore we cannot predict the date, but it's coming out sooner or later anyway. Hopefully sooner dear friends.

In the meanwhile, have a magical spring time waiting for that winter's last snowflake (wink)."