Val Kilmer will be back on the big screen, over a year after his death, in a film he was cast for but never acted in.
Kilmer was set to play the role of Father Fintan in the film As Deep as the Grave. Due to his illness, he wasn’t able to play the part. Then, the film’s director, Coerte Voorhees, made the decision to use an AI-generated likeness of Kilmer to fill the role, with the permission of Kilmer’s daughter.
While typically the role would be recast, Voorhees was adamant about Kilmer playing the part.
“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” Voorhees told Variety. “It was very much designed around him. It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest. I was looking at a call sheet the other day, and we had him ready to shoot. He was just going through a really, really tough time medically, and he couldn’t do it.”
To generate the actor, the creative team used images of Kilmer, footage from his previous roles, and audio to recreate his voice.
As Deep as the Grave will tell the true story of Ann and Earl Morris, archaeologists working in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and studying the history of the Navajo people. The film stars Abigail Lawrie and Tom Felton and the cast includes Wes Studi and Abigail Breslin, along with the AI-version of Val Kilmer. Variety reports that Kilmer will appear in “a significant part” of the film.