The late “Top Gun” and “Batman Forever” actor Val Kilmer passed away from pneumonia in April last year, but will make one final appearance on screen with the help of generative AI.
Kilmer was cast in filmmaker Coerte Voorhees’ “As Deep as the Grave” in 2020. He was set to play Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist. However, due to Kilmer’s throat cancer, he never shot anything for it.
Voorhees tells Variety that the project was “very much designed around him. It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest”. The project had him ready to shoot, but “he was just going through a really, really tough time medically, and he couldn’t do it.”
Now, to finish the film, Voorhees has used generative AI to include Kilmer in the ensemble following receiving permission to do so from the Kilmer estate and Kilmer’s children Mercedes and Jack:
“His family kept saying how important they thought the movie was and that Val really wanted to be a part of this. He really thought it was important story that he wanted his name on. It was that support that gave me the confidence to say, okay let’s do this. Despite the fact some people might call it controversial, this is what Val wanted.
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.”
The film itself is the true story tale of Southwestern archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris and their excavations in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona to try and trace the history of the Navajo people.
Abigail Lawrie, Tom Felton, Wes Studi, and Abigail Breslin star in the film with the AI Kilmer a ‘significant part’ of the movie. Kilmer’s voice, along with younger images and footage from his final years, are being used to represent the character in the movie.
