A year after his death, Val Kilmer was resurrected in AI for a new film

Director Coerte Voorhees had permission from his family to include him in As Deep as the Grave…

This is a project that risks provoking quite a debate.

A year after the disappearance of Val Kilmer, the actor will reappear on screen in a new film: As Deep as the Grave… without having filmed a single scene. How ? Thanks to AI obviously.

To understand, we have to go back to 2020. Five years before his death, Val Kilmer was chosen to play Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, in this independent film by Coerte Voorhees. But weakened by his throat cancer, the actor was never able to go to the set to film his scenes. “He was the actor I absolutely wanted. The role was written for him.” the director explains to Variety today. “But he was going through an extremely difficult medical period.”

Rather than recast, the team made a radical choice: recreate Val Kilmer using cutting-edge generative AI. A decision taken with the agreement of his beneficiaries, in particular his daughter Mercedes Kilmer and the support of his son Jack. The filmmaker assumes and tries to justify himself:

“Val wanted to be part of this film. Even if some people find it controversial, it’s what he would have wanted.”

Result: a digital version of the actor appears in a significant part of the film, constructed from archives, younger images, captured from his last years, and a reconstruction of his voice, weakened after a tracheotomy. The parallel is all the more striking since the character himself suffers from tuberculosis. A direct resonance with Val Kilmer’s state of health at the end of his life. For producer John Voorhees, this correspondence creates “a form of bridge between the actor and the character”.

As Deep as the Grave will tell the true story of archaeologists exploring Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, to trace the history of the Navajo people. In the casting we will also see (in real life this time) Tom Felton, Abigail Lawrie and Abigail Breslin. An indie production marked by Covid, which saw its filming stretch over six years. At one point, Father Fintan’s scenes were even deleted, before becoming essential again in the final cut. However, it’s impossible to return: no budget, no means. AI then emerged as a solution, Variety tells us.

Obviously, a solution that risks making people cringe, for a thousand and one reasons. The use of artificial intelligence continues to divide Hollywood, between concerns about employment and questions of consent. The Voorhees brothers claim to have done things well and respected the rules of SAG-AFTRA and paid the estate of Val Kilmer. In a press release, Mercedes Kilmer recalls that her father saw new technologies as “a way to expand the possibilities of the story.” It should also be remembered that in 2022, for Top Gun: Maverickthe actor had already used AI to recreate his voice alongside Tom Cruise. Still, resurrecting a dead person on screen is on another level…