BIG BUG MAN - The final, lost film of Marlon Brando

Film icons making their cinematic swan song as the voice in an animated film of questionable repute isn't unheard of -- who can forget Sean Connery's (most likely) final role in the choppy Scotish film SIR BILLI (released to the states as GUARDIAN OF THE HIGHLANDS) or Orson Welles belting out commands as the planet-eating Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE?

At least those movies were released.  Marlon Brando's last foray into features hasn't been so lucky.  BIG BUG MAN, an animated feature that uses Brando's voice recorded on June 10, 2004 (three weeks before his death) has yet to see the light of day.

BIG BUG MAN is the story of a candy factory worker (voiced by Brendan Fraser) who is bitten by bugs and becomes a superhero.  You can check out the storyboards for the film here.

So who does Brando play?  A mob boss?  A kindly "Uncle Ben" type to Fraser's Spider-ish-man? 

No, Brando plays Mrs. Sour, the elderly owner of the candy company in which our hero works.  In fact, he was so committed to the role that, according to writer/director Bob Bendetson, he performed his voice acting in drag, with a blonde wig, a dress, full makeup and gloves.

"He was gorgeous," Bendetson said. "I guess it was part of his Method training or something, where you almost embarrass yourself as the character, so that way you're free to be the character. ... About halfway through he took off the wig because he was getting too hot."

 So where is this amazing piece of cinema that you can hear a clip from in this 2004 news report?


 Lost to cinematic limbo, unfortunately. The film has yet to find any sort of release, and a search for updated information has yielded no results.  Bendetsen, who wrote the infamous final episode of "Newhart," hasn't had a screen credit since.  How many SPIDER-MAN reboots do we have to go through in order to make this one see the light of day?