Soon Marlon Brando he would have played Vito Corleone, a character with which Francis Ford Coppola gave him a legendary comeback. But already, according to Billy Zane, the great actor was “The Godfather”. Not of Cosa Nostra but «of the environmentalist movement, promoter of sustainable architecture and design, with zero emissions in its private atoll of Teriaroa». He is the heart of the story told in Waltzing with Brandoin which Zane (the villain of Titanic) steps into the actor’s very similar role, one of the hottest titles at the recently concluded Cannes 2024 Film Market, where biopics, as they have been for some time now, have reigned supreme .
In this case a very particular biographical film, concentrated in the years between 1969 and 1974, when Brando entrusted Bernard Judge with the task of Planning a Paradise in Tahiti, from the title of the book by the Los Angeles architect who attempted the feat. Also in the cast are Tia Carrere and Richard Dreyfuss. Brando and Judge moved to live in that paradise to build together an ecology model destined to last and teach. He had discovered that group of islands at the time of Mutiny on the Bounty, during research on the location of Miles’ film Milestone and purchased it in 1966. “If I have ever been able to experience a form of peace, it was there”, wrote Brando in his memories. That of Billy Zane, also a producer, seems, judging from the first images circulated, to be a new proof of actorly mimicry.
But there are many colleagues called upon to evoke famous characters, soon to be on the screens. For example, Anthony Hopkins will be George Friedrich Händel in The King of Covent Garden. «A powerfully majestic celebration of the genius who broke all the rules to create an anthem capable of inspiring the popular imagination of the world public», the claim with which the project was sold, arriving in autumn 2025.
Among the titles that aroused the most curiosity, In the Hand of Dante by Julian Schnabel with Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, Al Pacino, Gerard Butler, Martin Scorsese. It tells the story of the genesis of the Divine Comedy, with Scorsese as an actor in the role of the writer’s mentor. We will see a young Manuel de Cervantes painted by Alejandro Amenábar in The bailiff. In the cast alongside Julio Peña is Alessandro Borghi.
A great challenge also for Noomi Rapace, chosen by the Macedonian director Teona Stugar Mitevska (God is a woman and her name is Petrunya), in her first film in English, to play Mother Teresa of Calcutta in Mother.
Hugh Jackson will be a new Robin Hood, while Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is the Duse by Pietro Marcello, in a close portrait of the great diva, considered the greatest actress of her time. Noémie Merlant as her daughter. Also arriving is an Ingmar Bergman played by Robert Gustafsson who is also among the screenwriters.
But the most requested project was I Play Rocky, in which Peter Farrelly talks about the tumultuous making of the film which Sylvester Stallone he had written and tried to sell by vetoing: Rocky would have done it. Faced with many no’s, he worked with all his strength to make it happen on his own. The end is known: box office records and three Oscars. A piece of cinema history. And now also a biopic
