Documentary 'Stan Lee: The Final Chapter' Exposes Dark Secrets of Stan Lee's Final Years
Director Jon Bolerjack spent six years breaking through legal barriers and industry rejections to show the world his harrowing footage.
Director Jon Bolerjack spent six years breaking through legal barriers and industry rejections to show the world his harrowing footage.
The documentary "Stan Lee: The Final Chapter" is available via Video on Demand and depicts the grueling daily life of the legendary Marvel comic book author in his final years. Director Jon Bolerjack, who from 2015 followed Lee's every step as his personal videographer, told Business Insider about the arduous journey from filming to premiere, a path marked by lawsuits, rejections, and almost unbelievable industry resistance.
The 108-minute film reveals how Lee, despite his dizzying popularity thanks to the hits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spent his days at endless conventions signing comics while dozing off between autographs. In one scene, he asks his bodyguard and manager Max Anderson: "How much money did I make?", a question that convinced Bolerjack that something seriously wrong was happening to the legend.
According to Business Insider, Lee was the most sought-after name at comic book fairs at the time and received astronomical sums for appearances. After each signing session, his team counted piles of cash. Anderson, who became Lee's manager after previously serving as his bodyguard, claims he earned most of his money from those signings. "I get $1,500 to $2,000 for a signed copy of Spider-Man #1," Anderson told Business Insider.
Nevertheless, the documentary suggests the schedule was too demanding for a man in his nineties. Anderson counters that after the death of Lee's wife Joan in 2017, Lee simply wanted to keep moving constantly. "He didn't want to be at home anymore because there was no reason to be at home," Anderson stated.
After Lee's death in November 2018 at age 95, Anderson filed a lawsuit in 2019 against Bolerjack for allegedly violating an oral agreement to surrender all footage. "My lawyer thought it would take six months... in the end it took six years," Bolerjack recalled for Business Insider. The case was dismissed in June 2025 when Anderson failed to appear for a jury trial. That same month, Anderson pleaded guilty to tax fraud for failing to report $1.2 million in income to the IRS and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
A month earlier, in May 2025, Stan Lee's daughter, JC Lee, settled a lawsuit against Anderson in which she claimed he had stolen more than $21 million from her father. The details of the settlement were not disclosed.
Bolerjack decided back in 2019 to make the documentary because, as he says, "I thought it was important for his legacy to be as honest as possible, and I didn't want to give up that control." He was joined by Oscar-nominated documentarian Robert Kenner, but the 2020 pandemic killed the momentum and Kenner dropped out. After that, Bolerjack worked with production company Edgeline Films and director Kim Roberts on a series, but some executives downplayed the importance of the topic. "They would tell us that comic book fans don't watch documentaries, it was a strange resistance. We had to explain what Comic Con is and that a billion people had seen the 'Avengers' movies," Bolerjack told Business Insider.
In 2023, with producers Alex Barajas and George Chan, he raised $80,000 and began interviewing legends like Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld and Stan Lee's first successor as Marvel's editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas. In March 2025, they launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $300,000 that they didn't reach, but the publicity brought in investors and a final budget of $500,000.
In June 2026, "Stan Lee: The Final Chapter" screened at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles and won the Industry Choice Award. "When Stan died in the hospital, I cried for 40 minutes. In the theater, I cried for the first time since then. Getting approval from strangers, and then winning an award, was very rewarding," Bolerjack said. Today he emphasizes: "It was one obstacle after another. But I had to finish what I started."
The documentary is finally available to the public, and Bolerjack hopes his story will show Stan Lee as a living, breathing person, not just a caricature on a lunchbox.
