Toronto: Expect the phrase ‘Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho’ to turn up a lot in the entertainment press over the next few months, because it’s one of the few hints Terry Gilliam has offered about his latest picture Tideland. The famed director and former Monty Pythoner made a stop at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month to talk up his latest project – now shooting in Saskatchewan – but stayed coy about the details, remarking at a press conference that ‘to tell the story would ruin the whole point of the story.’

‘You can read the book if you want to, of course,’ he added, ‘but don’t tell anyone.’

The pic comes from the Mitch Cullin novel of the same name, published in 2000, about a traumatized young girl who wanders through the landscape of her own imagination. Gilliam adapted the script with his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas scribe Tony Grisoni and recently tapped nine-year-old Vancouver native Jodelle Ferland (Kingdom Hospital, Wolf Lake) for the lead, putting much of the $20-million movie on her shoulders.

‘She’s in every single scene,’ said Gilliam, seated next to his star, her pink wool cap barely visible over the conference table. ‘She is the movie.’

The casting, by former Alliance Atlantis Communications exec Deirdra Bowen, echoes that of Gilliam’s 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which starred a then-preteen Sarah Polley. ‘There’s something about Canada and little girls,’ says Gilliam.

Tideland also stars Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Tilly, Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher, and is coproduced by Jeremy Thomas (Rabbit Proof Fence) of the U.K.’s Recorded Picture Company and Gabriella Martinelli (Lives of the Saints, M. Butterfly) of Toronto’s Capri Films, with help from Foresight Film Partnership, Telefilm Canada, Astral Media, CTF and The Harold Greenberg Fund.

Gilliam has also reteamed with Nicola Pecorini, DOP for Fear and Loathing and for his famously failed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Capri will distribute in Canada, world sales are handled by HanWay Films.

Martinelli and Thomas previously worked together on David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch in 1991, and are also set to copro the thriller High Rise by director Vincenzo Natali, the story for which is lifted from the J.G. Ballard novel. Capri is also developing an adaptation of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees and the FX-driven fantasy The Knight and the Loathly Lady. The Capri miniseries Lives of the Saints will air on CTV in January.

Gilliam had good things to say about the crews and locations in Saskatchewan, which subs for Texas in Tideland. He also joked that the pic’s high budget is making him nervous, in that he’ll have no one to blame if things go wrong. ‘I’ve always been frightened by having enough money to do what I want,’ he says. ‘Jeremy and Gabriella, they say this will be an enjoyable experience. That’s got me worried.’