Billy Zane Embodies Marlon Brando in New Waltzing with Brando Trailer — Watch Now (Exclusive)

Marlon Brando lives again thanks to Billy Zane’s new biopic. 

Zane, 59, produces and stars as the late Oscar-winning screen legend circa the late 1960s in Waltzing with Brando. The film’s new trailer, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, teases glimpses of Brando filming The Godfather and building his sustainable retreat on a remote island chain in Tahiti.

Directed and adapted by Bill Fishman from architect Bernard Judge’s 2011 memoir of the same name, Waltzing with Brando had its world premiere as the closing night title at the Torino Film Festival in November 2024. In addition to the Titanic actor, it costars Jon Heder, Tia Carrere, Richard Dreyfuss, Alaina Huffman, Rob Corddry and more. 

The movie depicts the against-all-odds efforts of Brando and Judge (played by Heder) to transform Tahiti’s uninhabitable twelve-island atoll, Tetiaroa, into an ecologically sound retreat. “It is a Polynesian treasure,” Zane as Brando can be heard saying, “far away from those suckers in Hollywood.”

When Brando says he wants “to build a home there,” Heder’s Judge has to make sure he understands correctly: “You want to live on an abandoned island with no potable water or food source or electricity?” 

“Yes, I do,” responds Zane’s Brando, as we see glimpses of him alternately on the sunny island and filming his iconic movies back in Los Angeles. Later in the trailer, Heder’s hapless architect stubs his toe on one of the actor’s Oscar statuettes on the floor. 

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While building the hotel Brando envisions, Judge and the local crew appear to undergo all kinds of misadventures, from skinny dipping to dangerous plane-flying to snorkeling with sharks. 

Judge, who died in 2021, was an award-winning architect whose innovations in building focused on environmental sustainability, making him the perfect candidate for Brando’s ambitious paradise. In May of 2024, Zane and fellow producers Fishman and Dean Bloxom announced that they pledged to send 5% of the movie’s proceeds to Tetiaroa Society.

Waltzing with Brando, from Iconic Releasing, is in theaters Sept. 19.