Val Kilmer, ‘resurrected’ with AI to appear in a film months after his death

American actor Val Kilmerwho died in April 2025 at the age of 65 due to throat cancer, will return to the big screen thanks to Artificial Intelligence in the film ‘As Deep as the Grave’directed by Coerte Voorhees, as announced by the film’s production company First Line Films in ‘Variety’.

The filmmaker, with the consent of the actor’s family, has digitally recreated the performer who did not film any scene in the film due to his health problems, combining archive images, family videos and recordings of his voice with generative AI.

“He was the actor I wanted for this role. Everything was thought for him. It was based on his Native American heritage and his connection to and love of the Southwest.. The other day I was looking at the shooting sheet and we had it ready to film. “He was going through a very, very difficult time with his health and he couldn’t do it,” Voorhees said.

Kilmer plays Father Fintan in the film, a spiritual figure who appears at different stages of his life, for which both materials from his youth and his later years have been used.

“His family kept saying how important they thought the film was and that Val really wanted to be a part of it. He believed it was an important story and wanted his name on it. It was that support that gave me the confidence to say, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ Although some may consider it controversial, this is what Val wanted,” adds the filmmaker.

The actor’s voice has also been reconstructed from AI models based on the previous work he developed together with the company Sonantic, with which he already collaborated to recover his timbre in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’after the tracheostomy that affected his speech.

In a statement, according to ‘Variety’, the actor’s daughter Mercedes Kilmer stated that she supported the film and noted that her father was “a deeply spiritual man” who felt identified with a “story of discovery and enlightenment” set in the American Southwest, where he made his home in New Mexico.

According to ‘Variety’, the initiative has reopened the debate in Hollywood about the ethical limits of using artificial intelligence to recreate deceased actors. Trade union organizations such as SAG-AFTRA are studying additional measures to protect posthumous image rights and strengthen the control of heirs over these uses.