Val Kilmer died on April 1, 2025. Nearly a year later, he has a new movie coming out.

The late actor will appear in a “significant part” of As Deep as the Grave, an independent film about early 20th-century archaeologists in the American Southwest. His performance — as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist — was generated entirely by AI. Kilmer never set foot on set.

This is not a fleeting digital cameo à la Rogue One’s Peter Cushing. Director Coerte Voorhees says Kilmer’s AI-rendered character appears throughout the film, depicted at various ages using family-provided photographs and footage from his final years. His voice, already damaged by a tracheotomy related to his throat cancer treatment, was recreated digitally — building on work Kilmer had previously done with voice synthesis company Sonantic for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022.

The Consent Question

The filmmakers’ central defense is straightforward: Val wanted this. Voorhees cast Kilmer in the role five years before the actor’s death. Throat cancer and COVID-19 complications prevented him from ever filming.

“Despite the fact some people might call it controversial, this is what Val wanted,” Voorhees told NBC News. “He really thought it was an important story that he wanted his name on.”

Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes has publicly supported the project, saying her father “always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling.” His son Jack is also reportedly on board. The estate has given its consent to the project — though SAG-AFTRA and studios have yet to reach agreement on broader rules governing AI usage of performers’ likenesses.

But “what Val wanted” was to act in a film. He agreed to a role — not to having his likeness generated by technology that, at the time of his agreement, didn’t exist in its current form. The gap between saying yes to a movie and endorsing your posthumous AI recreation is worth noting, even if the family has bridged it on his behalf.

Legal Ground, Shaky Precedent

California’s AB 1836, signed into law in 2024, specifically protects deceased performers’ digital likenesses as part of their posthumous right of publicity. The law requires estate consent before a digital replica can be used commercially — which, in this case, has been obtained.

Legally, the production appears solid. Ethically, the terrain is less mapped. Previous posthumous screen appearances — Peter Cushing in Rogue One, Paul Walker in Furious 7 — relied on CGI superimposed onto body doubles. As Deep as the Grave is being described as the first film to use generative AI for a full posthumous performance, a genuine industry first.

Whether It Works Is Almost Beside the Point

The film — based on the true story of archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris and their excavations documenting Ancestral Puebloan culture in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona — features Tom Felton, Abigail Lawrie, Abigail Breslin, and Wes Studi. Produced by New Mexico-based First Line Films, it has been in post-production for three years and is currently seeking distribution.

Whether Kilmer’s AI performance is convincing is an open question. The A.V. Club noted that Seth MacFarlane’s Ted recently featured an AI-generated Bill Clinton that “split his time between the White House and the uncanny valley” — a reminder that the technology’s results remain uneven.

But artistic quality may be secondary to what this film represents. If an estate can consent, the law allows it, and the technology can deliver a plausible performance, the precedent is set. Every actor alive today is making choices — whether they realize it or not — about what happens to their likeness after they’re gone.

Kilmer, to his credit, had thought about it more than most. The man who told an interviewer in 2005 that actors understand their characters “at a deeper level than people who experience them in real life” was already comfortable with the idea that a performance could exist independently of the performer.

Whether that philosophy extends to performances he never actually gave is the question this film cannot answer — no matter how good the AI is.

Sources