In the beginning of autumn 2008, Nightwish frontman Tuomas Holopainen first introduced the idea for the movie to fellow band members and to music video director Stobe Harju with whom the band had worked on the music video for "The Islander”. Harju immediately liked the concept. Holopainen's original idea was to shoot a music video for each of the thirteen songs of the album, but Harju suggested they should also include dialogue. Both started pre-production on Imaginaerum and Harju wrote a 70-page first draft of the screenplay based on Holopainen's original ideas. It was decided that instead of a collection of separate music videos they should create a full movie with a bigger story. The film was developed simultaneouly with the album.
On the story, Holopainen commented: "I wanted to convey a positive message and a sense of carpe diem. The movie is about the joy of being alive and the beauty of the world." For the visuals of the film, he cited the works of Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman and Salvador Dalí as inspirations. Harju described the musical style of Imaginaerum as "a cross between Moulin Rouge! and Pink Floyd's The Wall”. The film will heavily feature CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) and other special effects.
Nightwish members will appear both as themselves playing some of the songs and in small supporting roles featuring dialogue. Holopainen will appear as "a gray and wrinkled 50-year-old". Harju wanted the audience "to feel the presence of Nightwish" and designed the names of the characters the band members are playing to resemble their own names: Anette Olzon plays Ann, Tuomas Holopainen plays Tom, Marco Hietala plays Marcus, Emppu Vuorinen plays Emil and Jukka Nevalainen plays Jack.
Some of the music in the movie will be slightly different from that of the album and there will be also a score written by Petri Alanko, who composed the video game Alan Wake for which Harju directed the cutscenes. According to Holopainen the running time of the film will be "around 80 minutes".
At the end of May 2011 final changes were made to the screenplay and part of the post-production was started before the actual shooting. It was revealed that there is an animated character who "will surely be remembered by many a Nightwish fan". A blog update on Nightwish's site stated that "Imaginaerum will in no way be a children’s movie but a dark and foreboding fantasy; a dream world that lacks no surprises."
The film was first announced publicly on February 10, 2011 on the official site of Nightwish. A teaser poster by Janne "Toxic Angel" Pitkänen was released and a trailer is expected to be released before the end of 2011.
Casting was completed in August 2011. Shooting was completed in 18 days between September and October 2011, mostly in Montreal, Canada due to the incentives the country offers to foreign movie productions. Bassist Marco Hietala revealed that all scenes featuring Nightwish have already been completed as of September 23, 2011.
On October 11, 2011, the cast was announced on the official website, including Francis X. McCarthy, Quinn Lord, Marianne Farley, Joanna Noyes, Ilkka Villi, Keyanna Fielding, Ron Lea. Victoria Jung, Hélène Robitaille, and Stephane Demers.
A teaser trailer of the film was uploaded to Nightwish's YouTube channel on April 24, 2012.
A full theatrical trailer of the film was released on October 16, 2012.
The world premiere of the film was on November 10th, 2012 at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki.
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-cd-1.jpg "NIGHTWISH - IMAGINAERUM (THE SCORE) (CD)")