Val Kilmer’s AI Resurrection Raises Questions About The Future of Movies

Val Kilmer passed away last year, but he's being brought back from the dead via AI to star in a new film.

The film As Deep as the Grave, put out its first trailer this week showing Val Kilmer in full AI. It was a film that he was committed to doing before he passed away and was unable to film any of. He ended up being too sick to shoot the role but seemingly was very excited about the film due to his heritage being similar to the characters. 

The creators of the film got the rights from his estate to use his likeness via AI to complete the film without recasting him. His character is completely AI and seemingly the first of its kind. There doesn’t seem to be an exact runtime for his character in the film, but he’s definitely one of the more important parts of it.

AI can be pretty dangerous when used in art like this. 

There have been times when an actor or actress is dead and they see CGI of their likeness onto someone else in a film. We have seen this in some of the new Star Wars films where some of the actors and actresses who had passed away from the originals were CGI'd onto someone so their roles kept the same likeness.

It seems that Val Kilmer being in a movie without him actually being in it is pretty strange. Although his estate agreed to it, it seems that if Val Kilmer were alive and were unable to do the film due to sickness, he probably still would’ve let them use AI for his part. I still feel weird about it, though.

I don’t think we’re too far off from movies using only AI actors for the entire cast. 

When it comes to VoiceOver, this is something that they could probably do more easily with AI. I have a feeling that will come first before we have an all-AI movie with big names being used. The death of creativity is something that needs to be looked at, as it won’t be too long before creativity is an afterthought when it comes to making movies.

Of course, nowadays there are plenty of slop movies, and not a lot of creativity is put into them, but when AI is doing everything for the movies themselves, that’s when things are going to go downhill fast. Plenty of studios have expressed interest in doing full CGI projects, and after As Deep as The Grave comes out, it might end up getting more people to follow in its footsteps. 

It’s also not like a lot of these studios don’t have the money to pay someone to do these sorts of jobs. Millions upon millions of dollars are put into movies, so it’s not very hard to get someone to do certain jobs that are going to be replaced by AI. As Deep As The Grave might be an exception because Val Kilmer was already attached to the film and passed away before he could end up acting in it.

The role was made around them, so using AI to generate him makes more sense than using AI for everyone in a movie. But I don’t think we’re far from that, and this movie might just be the domino effect that AI needs to break through more into movies.