A new documentary is focusing on the troubled final years of Stan Lee, who passed in 2018. More here.
When Stan Lee, a giant of popular culture passed away in 2018 at the age of 95, his passing was marked with a huge outpouring of gratitude and of course, sadness. After all, Stan Lee was the face of Marvel Comics and the wider Marvel brand for decades, and his life-long dedication to the comic book characters – many of whom he co-created – was part of the reason the company endured through some difficult periods to become the pop culture juggernaut it is today.
With Stan Lee’s death also came a far more disturbing revelation, however. Claims were made that Lee’s final years had seen the ageing star exploited and abused, with those around him using his fame to enrich themselves. Lee was allegedly put through a punishing series of events that pushed him beyond any justifiable kind of schedule for a person in their mid-90s. Even someone with Lee’s trademark vim.
The Hollywood Reporter published an expose of the goings on at the time, but a new documentary from Jon Bolerjack claims that it will expose on camera some of Lee’s inner circle who were exploiting him. Bolerjack has turned hundreds of hours of footage into a documentary called Stan Lee: The Final Years, which he says he has put hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into creating. He’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the rest of the film’s production which you can find here.
While there will of course be more than one side to this story, Bolerjack claims that his documentary will offer fresh insight, including the claim that Lee was in financial ruin at the time of his death. It’s a claim that is markedly different to the estimations made by the wider press in 2018.
If you want to check out the trailer for the documentary, you can find it below.
More on the film as we hear it.
