Culture October 31, 2024

Billy Zane is spitting image of Marlon Brando in 1st look at 'Waltzing with Brando' film: See the photos

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Billy Zane is picture-perfect as Marlon Brando in the first look at the upcoming film "Waltzing with Brando."

Images from the Bill Fishman-directed film show Zane -- best known for his role in 1997's "Titanic" -- as a dead ringer for Brando during the era of his 1972 films "The Godfather" and "Last Tango in Paris."

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Brando famously won the Oscar for playing Vito Corleone, the crime boss patriarch of "The Godfather," but declined the award.

Paramount Pictures/YouTube and Torino Film Festival
Marlon Brando in 1972 film, "The Godfather," left, and Billy Zane portraying Brando in the upcoming film "Waltzing with Brando."

He also earned an Oscar nomination for "Last Tango in Paris," in which he co-starred alongside Maria Schneider.

AP/Torino Film Festival
Marlon Brando on the set of "Last Tango in Paris," left, and Billy Zane in the upcoming film "Waltzing with Brando."

The synopsis for the "Waltzing with Brando," which takes place between 1969 and 1974, notes that it's "the little-known but absolutely true story of how Marlon Brando convinced the architect Bernard 'Bernie' Judge that, together, they could build the first ecologically perfect retreat on one of Tahiti's tiny, uninhabited islands."

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"Brando believed that this great ecological experiment would inspire the world to create a better and more sustainable future," the synopsis continues. "Thus, Bernie, the practical problem solver, and Brando, the temperamental dreamer, begin an incredible adventure and, along the way, become improbable friends. But will this dream ever come true?"

"Waltzing with Brando," based on Judge's 2011 book "Waltzing with Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti," will make its world premiere as the closing film for the 2024 Torino Film Festival on Nov. 30.

The 42nd annual film festival will also feature a major retrospective on Brando to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Brando, who did win -- and accept -- an Academy Award for 1954's "On the Waterfront," died at the age of 80 in 2004.