The late Val Kilmer will be resurrected via AI for an upcoming indie movie — with the blessing of the actor’s family.
Variety reported that Kilmer, who died last year aged 65 after a long-running battle with throat cancer, will appear in AI form in As Deep as the Grave. The Top Gun, Tombstone, and Batman Forever star was cast as Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist Father Fintan in the movie, but was too sick to film it. Production was heavily delayed by the pandemic and the filmmakers were forced to cut scenes in which Fintan appeared, but they decided they had to put them back in to make the story make sense.
Val Kilmer Resurrected by AI to Star in ‘As Deep as the Grave’ Movie — First Look https://t.co/NxC287pUrV via @variety
— Todd Spangler (@xpangler) March 18, 2026
Writer and director Coerte Voorhees justified the decision, pointing to the support of Kilmer’s estate (which was compensated) and daughter Mercedes, adding that “despite the fact some people might call it controversial, this is what Val wanted.”
“We really figured out that this is a major missing element,” Voorhees added. “Normally we would just recast an actor. 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.”
Mercedes Kilmer added: “He always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling. This spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part.”
In 2021, Val Kilmer announced he had worked with a company to create an A.I.-powered speaking voice for himself, handing over hours of archival footage that was turned into a model. Kilmer went on to reprise his iconic role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, as part of an emotional scene with Tom Cruise that acted as a farewell of sorts.
This isn’t the first time a deceased actor has been resurrected via AI or other visuals technology. Lucasfilm has recreated Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia multiple times, including through digital de-aging in 2016’s Rogue One, and by assembling unused archive footage for The Rise of Skywalker. More recently, Ian Holm reprised his role as android Ash in Alien Romulus — despite having died in 2020, and Ghostbusters Afterlife featured Harold Ramis, who played Dr. Egon Spengler, as a CGI ghost. CGI and AI-driven deepfakes like these have sparked a vociferous debate regarding the ethics of using a deceased actor’s likeness.
And it’s not reserved for the world of movies, either. In 2023, Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt used AI to replace a deceased voice actor after gaining permission from the family. And last year, AI Darth Vader hit Fortnite, voiced by the inimitable James Earl Jones, who died in September 2024 at the age of 93.
Amid the arrival of the likes of AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, not everyone is a fan of AI “performances.” Last year, Nicolas Cage slammed AI by saying any actor who lets it alter their performance is approaching “a dead end” as “robots cannot reflect the human condition.” And in January, Marvel and Jurassic World star Chris Pratt called the panic within Hollywood about the potential impact of AI “actors” is “bulls**t.”
Photo by EuropaNewswire/Gado/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
