Why Leslie Nielsen's Final Movie May Never Be Released

It's not easy for actors to pull off the career shift that Leslie Nielsen did. The son of a Royal Canadian Mountie stationed near the Arctic Circle, Nielsen started his entertainment career in radio. After studying performing in Toronto, he made his way to New York, where he began working in theater and then in television. Partially to advance his career and partially because he was uncomfortable about his modest beginnings, Nielsen maintained a stoic screen persona that kept him busy in TV throughout the 1950s and 60s. When Hollywood called, it was with dramatic and occasionally romantic parts that suited his steely front.

From "Forbidden Planet" in 1956 to "The Poseidon Adventure" in 1972, Nielsen maintained steady work as a serious, authoritative actor. He played military figures, gunslingers, and might have had a regular part in "Hawaii Five-O" if he hadn't been dropped after the pilot. But in 1980, when Nielsen was 54, he was cast in the disaster movie parody "Airplane!" His deadpan performance drew raves, and while it took a few years for the rest of Hollywood to tap into his comedic potential, by decade's end, his persona had definitively shifted from dramatic lead to king of the spoofs.

All of his feature film credits from his final years are comedies. His commitment to his new comedic persona was so total that he had a gag put on his gravestone. And he was working on another comedy when he died in 2010 — an animated film called "The Waterman Movie." But his last unreleased performance may never see the light of day due to production woes.

The man behind Leslie Nielsen's final, unreleased role is Bryan Waterman, who was only 22 years old when he approached the actor about doing a voice for an animated feature. Waterman had developed an animated series in college, named for himself, and it featured a main character based on Nielsen: Ready Espanosa. The explorer extraordinaire's design approximated the performer's face if he had a dueling scar down one eye (pictured).  "Leslie was my childhood hero," Waterman told Entertainment Weekly, and when he began working on a feature, he reached out to Nielsen's representatives. He was prepared to scrap the film when he didn't hear back after several months, but the star personally contacted him to discuss the project further.

Nielsen agreed to work on the film without compensation, and he regaled Waterman with stories from his life and career as they recorded his part for "The Waterman Movie." While the film remains Nielsen's last role in that it is currently unreleased, it wasn't his last production — recording sessions were done by phone in 2007 over two days. In the years between recording his lines and his death, the actor made six more movies.

Nielsen completed all his lines before he died and told Waterman he would help to promote the film once it was completed. The two hit it off and would regularly converse up until Nielsen's death. Waterman said that the last time they talked was before Thanksgiving 2010.

"The Waterman Movie" was an independent production and had several years of work behind it by the time Leslie Nielsen got involved. Bryan Waterman set up a Kickstarter in 2010 to raise the budget for the film, with the goal set at $35,000. He fell well short of that — before the clock ran out, backers had pledged just over $13,000. By the time Nielsen died, Waterman had just two minutes of completed footage, plus a handful of animation tests.

Waterman eventually got almost five minutes finished — the initial scene of "The Waterman Movie" — with help from CJC Animation. He told Creative Chair in 2013 that a lack of money and manpower had been the two greatest roadblocks to further progress. Unless either situation changed, he said it was likely that production would continue to drag out. But Waterman insisted that he was still working on the film. The Waterman Studios website still carries a production history section wherein he vows to finish the film, if only to bring another Leslie Nielsen performance to his fans.

The website does not appear to have been updated since 2012. CJC Animation's page on the project describes it as "indefinitely" on hold, and there have been no updates on the movie from Waterman himself in years.