Bryan Singer, producer-director of the upcoming Superman Returns, said that he used every trick in the book to resurrect the late Marlon Brando and include him in the film as Jor-El. Brando played the role of Superman’s father in director Richard Donner’s original 1978 Superman movie. He died in July 2004 at the age of 80.

To recreate Brando’s version of the character in his new Superman movie, Singer said in an interview that he used “a combination of unused footage, [used] footage and recreated footage. You won’t necessarily see Marlon Brando walking around or reanimated in a conventional sense, but you will hear [dialogue] that you have heard before [and] takes that you haven’t heard before and a rendering that is completely new.”

Singer added that the Brando sequences are being created with “very raw material” culled from a variety of sources and locales. “A lot of the stuff was all over the place,” he said. “A lot of the stuff was in vaults in New York [and] in Los Angeles. I got ahold of Brando’s London [automated dialogue replacement, or looping,] session. I had very interesting outtakes, which are something to see. So there’s a lot of material. It’s great [also] to hear … Dick’s [Donner’s] voice on the ADR sessions, on the raw material. There are a few really funny moments—we called them ‘Brando Bloopers’—where you hear Dick and [an uncredited writer] Tom Mankiewicz in the background. It’s cool.” Superman Returns will open nationwide on June 30, 2006.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers announced that the teaser trailer for Superman Returns will debut during The WB’s Smallville, airing at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Nov. 17, and will hit theaters in select screenings of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which opens Nov. 18.

Source: SciFi Wire