The “rainbow tribe” of Marlon Brando’s multitude of acknowledged children, ex-wives and lovers are growing impatient for their inheritance.

Penniless relatives are eager to share a fortune after the screen actor died in July 2004. They are hoping to benefit from the transformation of his dilapidated Polynesian atoll near Tahiti into a world-class hotel.

The Brando eco-lodge was due to open this summer with 30 villas in the heart of a South Pacific nature reserve, but last week the agency representing the development said: “Nothing is going on and we don’t know when it will.”

Brando, who bought the Tetiaroa atoll in 1965, three years after filming Mutiny on the Bounty in Polynesia, talked about leaving it as an unspoilt refuge for his children. However, financial realities have intruded.

It is due to be developed by the Louisiana-born entrepreneur Richard Bailey, who was expected to pay the family £250,000 a year in rent and image rights. Last week Bailey did not respond to questions but his website promises that it is “coming soon”.

It cannot come soon enough for Anna Kashfi, 73, a former waitress from Cardiff who became the mother of Brando’s oldest son Christian.

When Christian died in January she reportedly had to sell their tragic story to tabloid magazines to pay for the funeral. Brando’s executors had declined to pay for it.

“Marlon was treated horribly when he was a child, trapped between a cold father and a drunken mother he had to rescue every night from a bar stool, and he treated his own children little better,” said Stefan Kanfer, whose biography Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando, will be published in November. “He was an awful father in life and, it appears, not much better in death.”

One of Brando’s younger sons, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We all wanted to kill [Michael] Medavoy [one of Brando’s executors] because he is doing things our father would have hated, although it will be different if and when the money starts flowing. I’ve a handful of dollars, but not enough to live on.”

Medavoy inherited a financial morass from the wilfully disorganised superstar. Months before he died Brando told a Los Angeles court that he was nearly broke, could not afford life insurance and required assistance to educate his youngest son Timothy, now 14, who is autistic.

Since his executors sold Brando’s bungalow to Jack Nicholson, his neighbour, for nearly £3.4m in 2004 they have been doling out payments to most of his family. “It’s coming along but not as fast as the family might like,” said a source.

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin