Billy Zane’s Marlon Brando Trades Hollywood for Tahiti in ‘Waltzing With Brando’ Trailer

Marlon Brando transformed into all different kinds of people on the big screen. He was a dockworker in On the Waterfront, Shakespeare’s Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, and a temperamental and abusive drunk in A Streetcar Named Desire. But it was while he was preparing to become the mafia boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather that he decided to try a new role based in the real world: the founder of an ecological island resort in Tahiti. Playing pretend for so long gave him an edge of boundless confidence that consumed the screen in the first trailer for Waltzing With Brando.

Billy Zane stars as Brando in the film, set for release in 2025. The first-look preview opens with his portrayal of the Hollywood legend wrapping on The Godfather. He carries an air of disinterest until he gets into talks with Bernard Judge, the architect played by Jon Heder, who is supposed to help make his Tahitian dream a reality.

“I own an island nearby,” Brando tells Judge. “It’s more beautiful than words can describe and cinematography can capture — and I want to move there.” The thing is, the island is essentially inhospitable. Judge wonders pretty immediately about where Marlon would obtain clean drinking water and what food he would find to survive off of there. The actor isn’t worried about it. “We’re working on a process to bring clean, drinkable water to the island,” he reassures the architect while offering him a sample. “Made from my own urine.”

Then there’s the matter of electricity, but the actor has considered that too: he’ll just use electric eels. “Put the eels in the lagoon to siphon off their energy, power our generators,” Brando says. Problem solved, apparently. Except he wouldn’t be living out there alone drinking urine water, gnawing on leaves, and relying on eels to keep the lights on. He also wants a hotel right on the beach — and he wants Judge to build it. It’s actually how he’s planning on paying for all of this in the first place, especially once investors start to pull out.

Waltzing With Brando is written and directed by Bill Fishman. It’s based on the real-life Bernard Judge’s memoir Waltzing with Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti, which he released in 2011. The book takes place between 1970 and 1975 as Brando and Judge attempt to turn the actor’s cluster of Tahitian islands into a sustainable getaway.
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Richard Dreyfuss, Camille Razat, Alaina Huffman, Tia Carrera, and James Jagger also appear in the film.