Marlon Brando is known as one of the greatest actors of all time, thanks to his iconic roles in movies such A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now. By the 1980s and 90s though, he was better known for his diva-like behaviour on the sets of the second Superman movie, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Johnny Depp’s The Brave. But none of these were actually his last movie.
That honour falls to an animated movie called Big Bug Man, which for unknown reasons, was never actually finished and released. According to the Lost Media Wiki, the film starred comeback kid and Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser as Howard Kind. He’s “an employee of a candy factory who is bitten by bugs, becoming the superhero Big Bug Man. However, he soon becomes corrupted by the business world.”
Even more extraordinarily, Brando was initially approached to play the part of an evil businessman named Nicholas Dunderbeck. But it turns out that he’d always wanted to play a woman at some point, so he decided to play the small role of the elderly candy company founder, Mrs. Sour.
When the directors arrived at his home to record him, they found that Brando had even dressed up in a wig, dress, gloves, and makeup. Brando was frail and required oxygen throughout the recording, but he remarked it was the most fun he had since acting in 1953’s Julius Caesar. He died the following month on July 1, 2004.
The film was initially scheduled to be released in 2006, but was delayed to 2007, and then to 2008. Nothing has been heard regarding the project’s release since. Only storyboard sequences have been found online, and a poster exists for the movie.
Check out our guide to the best movies of all time, to see if Brando made the cut.