Just days after Hollywood patted itself on the back at last week’s Academy Awards, the movie industry got a kick in the teeth from an unlikely source — an actor who’s been dead for nearly a year.
“Top Gun” and “Batman Forever” star Val Kilmer died in April after a decade-long battle with throat cancer, but a controversial moviemaker wants to bring him back to life.
He wants to use AI.
“As Deep as the Grave” director Coerte Voorhees told Variety that despite all the talented, living, breathing, hungry, struggling actors on the planet who would jump at the chance to star in a motion picture, he was casting a screen star who has been dead for almost a year.
“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” said Voorhees, who wrote and directed the film about Southwestern archaeologists who trace the history of the Navajo people.
Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist.
“It was very much designed around him,” Voorhees said.
“It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest. I was looking at a call sheet the other day, and we had him ready to shoot. He was just going through a really, really tough time medically, and he couldn’t do it.”
Kilmer never shot a single scene. He died before he could ever make it on set.
But Voorhees never screamed, “Cut!”
Instead, the moviemakers found a controversial work-around. They created a digital, generative AI likeness of the “Heat” star, along with an authentic voice, and kept the cameras rolling.
Action!
If it wasn’t so alarmingly real, this latest AI drama could be another box office action movie. We’ve seen this script before:
Scientists equip machines with human intelligence. Machines get drunk on power. Humans get replaced by robots. Machines try to take over the world.
Coming soon to a theater near you.
The film uses younger images of Kilmer and footage from some of his final projects to create the version audiences will see on the big screen.
Kilmer’s family signed off on the project, which Voorhees mistakenly interpreted as giving him the green light.
“His family kept saying how important they thought the movie was and that Val really wanted to be a part of this,” Voorhees told Variety.
“He really thought it was an important story that he wanted his name on. It was that support that gave me the confidence to say, OK let’s do this. Despite the fact some people might call it controversial, this is what Val wanted.”
No one disputes the brilliance of Kilmer as rock legend Jim Morrison in “The Doors.” And if there is a better Doc Holliday than the one Kilmer played in “Tombstone,” it has yet to be made.
But the sad truth is that Val Kilmer is as dead as Doc Holliday. He shouldn’t still be making movies.
Otherwise, we would just resurrect all our favorite actors. Steve McQueen. Sidney Poitier, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
This was the Pandora’s box that was kicked wide open last year with the introduction of AI actress Tilly Norwood.
This was what the Screen Actors Guild and real-life performers warned us about when AI-generated actors started answering the casting call.
Then, right on cue, Voorhees opened up about the real reason Kilmer was allowed to posthumously perform in his movie.
Virtual Val came cheap.
“Normally we would just recast an actor,” Voorhees. “I’m all about working with our actors, and we have brilliant performances all throughout this movie. But we can’t roll camera again. We don’t have the budget. We’re not a big studio film. So we had to think of innovative ways to do it. And we realized the technology is there for us.”
Let’s hope he doesn’t win an Oscar for the role. There’s no script for that one.