{"id":10316,"date":"2026-04-17T13:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/fury-val-kilmer-role-ai-film\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T13:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:21:20","slug":"fury-val-kilmer-role-ai-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/fury-val-kilmer-role-ai-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Fury Erupts as Val Kilmer\u2019s Estate Announces Starring Role in AI Film Made From Beyond the Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hollywood actors have been ringing the alarm bells<\/a> over an industry that\u2019s seemingly hellbent on replacing them with AI.<\/p>\n

And the general public appears to be on their side. Last year, a talent studio drew enormous and near-universal backlash<\/a> after announcing the creation of an AI-generated \u201cactress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even recently deceased Hollywood movie stars are fair game. During an ongoing industry trade show in Las Vegas, filmmakers behind an upcoming indie film featuring an AI-rendered version of iconic actor Val Kilmer, who\u2019s set to take a prominent role in the film \u2014 despite having died from cancer at the age of 65 last year.<\/p>\n

Kilmer was initially cast as a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist before his death, as Variety<\/em> reports<\/a>, but was too sick to be part of the movie. His estate stepped in, allowing the filmmakers to use generative AI to wrap up production of the film, which features the extraordinarily on-the-nose title of \u201cAs Deep as the Grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t fear the dead and don\u2019t fear me,\u201d the AI Kilmer tells a child in a trailer released at the trade show.<\/p>\n

A clip shared by Variety<\/em> and uploaded to YouTube<\/a> shows Kilmer\u2019s face conveniently cast in shadow underneath a deep hood while riding a horse. Other scenes also appear to be making liberal use of AI, resulting in a heavily-sharpened visual style that didn\u2019t go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe full trailer seems AI,\u201d a commenter wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery fitting that this trailer includes a scene where a corpse is unceremoniously yanked out of the ground,\u201d another user joked.<\/p>\n

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The inclusion of the late actor reignited a fiery debate over the use of a celebrity\u2019s likeness following their death. We\u2019ve already seen plenty of other Hollywood stars posthumously returning to the sliver screen<\/a> without their express consent, including Carrie Fisher, Paul Walker, and James Dean.<\/p>\n

However, generative AI has supercharged this trend, greatly lowering the barriers to entry compared to CGI<\/a>. Even everyday users are now able to generate videos of the dead<\/a>, using toos like OpenAI\u2019s since-discontinued<\/a> text-to-video app Sora.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is truly the MOST disgusting thing I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d actor Jackson Rathbone, of \u201cTwilight\u201d fame, tweeted<\/a> in an expletive-laden post.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey SAG-AFTRA, about that strike we had\u2026\u201d he added, referring to the trade union Screen Actors Guild\u2013American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, whose members went on strike<\/a> for 118 days in 2023 to secure protections against AI. \u201cYou owe us an explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rathbone also singled out Kilmer\u2019s daughter, Mercedes, for assisting the filmmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry for your loss, but this move begs the question\u2026 are you sorry for your loss?\u201d he wrote. \u201cOr are you capitalizing on your father\u2019s death for your own financial gain?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kilmer\u2019s daughter told Variety<\/em> in a statement that her father \u201calways looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling.\u201d Indeed, after he lost his ability to speak due to throat cancer, Kilmer dabbled in using AI technology to clone his voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

But given the resoundingly negative reaction the early look at the film drew online, the filmmakers still have a lot of convincing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore grotesque digital necromancy,\u201d analyst JP Gownder wrote in a scathing post on Bluesky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More on AI and dead actors:<\/strong> \u201cAlien: Romulus\u201d Used AI to Bring Back Dead Actor<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post Fury Erupts as Val Kilmer\u2019s Estate Announces Starring Role in AI Film Made From Beyond the Grave<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hollywood actors have been ringing the alarm bells over an industry that\u2019s seemingly hellbent on replacing them with AI. And the general public appears to be on their side. Last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}