Actors transforming into famous figures for biopics isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. In recent years, we’ve seen Marisa Abela’s Amy Winehouse in Back To Black, Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Bob Marley in One Love, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, and Sebastian Stan’s Donald J. Trump in The Apprentice. But just when the market for such movies may have been running the risk of getting overcrowded, along comes Waltzing With Brando to make us an offer we can’t refuse. That offer? Titanic actor Billy Zane going absolutely all-in to play Marlon Brando in a comedy about The Godfather legend’s efforts to create a sustainable pocket of paradise on a tiny Tahitian island. If it sounds barmy, then that’s nothing compared to how it looks — just check out the extraordinary trailer for Bill Fishman’s film below:
If, like us, you started watching this trailer and thought, “Huh, I didn’t know there was another new Godfather restoration; Don Corleone’s looking pretty darn high definition here!”, then may we just be the first to say that that’s not archival footage — that’s Zane. As is every bit of Brando we get here, from the actor’s legendary appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, to his time shooting Last Tango In Paris, to his environmental activism, the latter of which is where the movie’s primary focus lies — and where its nutty humour kicks in. “I’m working on a process to bring clean, drinkable water to the island, made from my own urine,” muses Brando at one point to LA architect-turned-Tetiaroa dream maker Bernard Judge (Napoleon Dynamite’s John Heder), the man on whose memoir Waltzing With Brando is based.
And here’s the full synopsis, per Variety: “Waltzing With Brando follows Brando (Zane) — then the most famous actor in the world — as he filmed Mutiny On The Bounty and bought a tiny and uninhabitable island in Tahiti. His intent was to escape his hectic Hollywood lifestyle and show the world the path to sustainability. To achieve this goal he plucks Judge (Heder), an obscure but idealistic Los Angeles architect, from his stable existence and convinces him that together they could build the world’s first truly sustainable ecological retreat.” Richard Dreyfuss and Tia Carrera also star.
Waltzing With Brando has yet to score distribution, so we can’t be sure when exactly it’ll hit our screens at this time. But surely after the world has seen Billy Zane go full Brando in this new trailer it’ll only be a matter of time before some distribution don decides to leave the gun, take the movie, and bring Fishman’s film to the world. The Oscar campaign starts right here, folks — Zaniacs, assemble!