Val Kilmer will be the latest Hollywood star to be resurrected by AI. The acting legend, who died last year at age 65, will star in the drama As Deep As the Grave.
Kilmer was attached to the project prior to his death from throat cancer.
The late actor will play Father Fintan, a Native American spiritualist and Catholic priest. Speaking to Variety, director and writer Coerte Voorhees said that the role was designed around Kilmer, who was an advocate for Native American rights and claimed to have Cherokee heritage.
“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” Voorhees said. “It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the south-west.” But Kilmer was unable to make it to set due to his battle with throat cancer.
The film-maker is working in conjunction with the late actor’s estate and his daughter, Mercedes, to bring Kilmer back to life with state-of-the-art, generative AI. Voorhees says that Kilmer’s son, Jack, an actor who starred alongside Rory Culkin in 2018’s Lord of Chaos, also supports the project.
“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 important story that he wanted his name on … Despite the fact some people might call it controversial, this is what Val wanted.”
As Deep As the Grave is based on the true story of archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris, who worked with the Navajo people in the 1920s to uncover North America’s earliest civilization, the Ancestral Puebloan. The film, previously titled Canyon Del Muerto, has been in the works since 2023 with Harry Potter actor Tom Felton set to star as Earl and Bafta winner Abigail Lawrie to play Ann. A supporting cast includes the Oscar winner Wes Studi and actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd.
The AI-generated version of Kilmer will appear in a “significant” portion of the film, Voorhees said. The film will use images of the actor taken throughout his life to re-create Kilmer through the decades.
In recent years, AI has begun to creep into Hollywood films, and in 2024 Brady Corbet’s Oscar-winning epic The Brutalist used AI to fine-tune actor Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent. Last year, Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine signed deals with startup ElevenLabs, allowing the company to create AI versions of their voices.
The 2021 documentary Val told the story of Kilmer’s life through archive footage, with voiceover from the actor’s son.
