©Courtesy of Torino Film Festival
Billy Zane’s highly anticipated biopic, Waltzing With Brando, is set to have its world premiere at this year’s Torino Film Festival in Italy, Variety is reporting. The SAG Award-nominated actor plays the movie’s titular character, Marlon Brando.
The upcoming drama was written and directed by Tapeheads filmmaker, Bill Fishman. His screenplay for the new movie follows Brando while he was preparing to star in The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris.
Waltzing With Brando is based on a memoir by the eponymous actor’s architect, Bernard Judge. The screen adaptation also follows how Brando took Judge, who was then an idealistic Los Angeles architect, from his stable existence. The Golden Globe-winning performer convinced the architect that he should build the world’s first ecologically perfect retreat on the Tahitian island of Tetiaroa. The majority of the drama was shot on the uninhabitable location.
Zane and Fishman will travel to Italy to present Waltzing With Brando. The biopic is serving as the closing film of Torino, which is also celebrating what would have been Brando’s 100th birth. The festival will feature a 24-title retrospective of movies featuring the Emmy Award-winner, who was known for his naturalistic acting style.
The festival’s upcoming 42nd edition will run Nov. 22-30. This year’s edition will be the first under new artistic director Giulio Base, who’s revamping the festival for young directors and indie cinema.
Base has praised Zane, who’s most remembered for his portrayal of Cal Hockley in Titanic, in Waltzing With Brando. Torino’s artistic director told Variety that “You won’t believe it: he is possessed by Marlon Brando,” while discussing the actor’s performance.
The news of Waltzing With Brando‘s world premiere at Torino comes after Zane previously shared a sneak peek photo of himself playing Brando on Instagram. In the image, Zane bears an uncanny the resemblance with the real Brando.
Zane has also addressed the project in interviews. He has even shared that the movie isn’t a traditional biopic that tells Brando’s entire story. Instead, the biopic focuses on one pivotal period of time in Brando’s life.
“The tone of the movie is…. not your average biopic, it’s not a cradle-to-grave story,” Zane told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a five-year period, and a unique friendship between his architect and him, trying to figure out sustainable design in the late sixties and early seventies in Tahiti. It’s curiously a really great lens on a figure, as opposed to trying to tell a whole lifetime.”
Waltzing With Brando does not yet have a wide release date after its world premiere. The full lineup for the Torino Film Festival will be announced on Nov. 7.
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