A photorealistic A.I. likeness of Val Kilmer, the “Top Gun,” “Batman Forever” and “Heat” actor who died from throat cancer last year, will appear in a new movie he had planned to shoot before being hindered by his illness.
Coerte Voorhees, the movie’s writer and director, said the A.I. likeness had been created in collaboration with Kilmer’s estate and would appear in a large portion of “As Deep as the Grave,” about an archaeologist’s discovery of an ancient Native American civilization.
“This movie is absolutely a tribute to Val Kilmer and honoring this last character that he was going to play,” Voorhees said. “We think this is a unique scenario that is going to prove to a lot of people the right way to do this.”
Using a trove of previously recorded videos, images and audio, the filmmakers were able to create a photorealistic digital model of Kilmer using a combination of publicly available generative A.I. tools. (Voorhees declined to say which ones.) They used traditional editing software to digitally insert the likeness into previously filmed scenes, and also used A.I. to create new scenes around the likeness.
“If we were still in the process of physically filming, we would have considered recasting,” Voorhees said. “But that just wasn’t in the cards.”
Kilmer’s daughter, Mercedes, said in a statement that her father was a deeply spiritual man and had resonated with his character, a real-life Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist who worked with the archaeologist Ann Axtell Morris in the 1920s.
“He always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling,” Kilmer said. “This spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part.”
Voorhees and his brother Justin, a producer of “As Deep as the Grave,” approached Mercedes Kilmer last year about using generative A.I. technology to create her father’s likeness. In Val Kilmer’s absence, the brothers had completed an earlier version of the film without him that they felt was incomplete. The new version is in postproduction and has a planned release this year.
Digital imaging tools have been used before to allow actors to appear in films posthumously.
Before the advent of modern A.I. technology, the makers of“Furious 7” (2015) used computer-generated imaging to create new scenes featuring the character portrayed by the actor Paul Walker, who died in a car crash during production. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016) and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” (2019) featured digital resurrections of characters originally played by Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher. And “The Flash” (2023) included a cameo from a digital facsimile of the “Superman” star Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004.
Coerte Voorhees said he hoped that his movie would be an example of how to create similar performances using today’s more powerful generative A.I. tools.
“We think this is the right first step in a new world we’re all exploring,” he said.
Reggie Ugwu is a Times culture reporter.
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