In September 2024, I wrote that studios would eventually license dead actors back to the screen. Less than two years later, the hypothetical has a name: Val Kilmer.
Kilmer died from pneumonia on April 1, 2025, aged 65, after throat cancer and two tracheotomies had severely impaired his voice. In 2026, the producers of As Deep as the Grave unveiled a trailer featuring a generative reconstruction of him as Father Fintan, a priest and spiritualist in a historical drama about archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris. Kilmer had accepted the role years earlier but never filmed a scene. AP News
That distinction matters. This is not digital restoration, a body double with a replaced face or an unfinished performance completed in post-production. It is a new performance assembled after the actor’s death from photographs, audio and archival material supplied by his estate.
The filmmakers created Kilmer at several ages. His character reportedly occupies one hour and 17 minutes of the film, speaks dialogue Kilmer never recorded and even uses a historical form of Navajo he did not speak. At CinemaCon, director Coerte Voorhees chose his words carefully: “Val Kilmer influenced this performance.” He did not call it a Val Kilmer performance. AP News
That may be the most honest description yet of synthetic acting.
Kilmer’s case is unusually complicated because his relationship with the technology began as restoration rather than exploitation. After cancer took his natural speaking voice, he worked with the British company Sonantic to create a synthetic voice from less than 30 minutes of usable archival audio. The system gave him a means of communicating in a voice he recognised as his own. It was assistive technology developed with his participation and permission. The Washington Post
Contrary to years of repeated reporting, however, Sonantic’s model was not used for his dialogue in Top Gun: Maverick. Director Joseph Kosinski said the film used Kilmer’s own recorded voice, mixed with a sound-alike and digitally clarified. The emotional force of the scene came from Kilmer’s physical presence: his face, silence, timing and interaction with Tom Cruise. The technology supported a living performance; it did not manufacture one. Vanity Fair
As Deep as the Grave crosses that line. Kilmer supplied no movement, inflection, reaction or judgment because he was never on set. His likeness performs, but the actor does not.
The production has consent. Kilmer’s children supported the project; his estate provided archival material and is being compensated. His daughter Mercedes has said the role mattered to her father and that he regarded emerging technology as a tool for storytelling. She has also said the estate does not intend to authorise further synthetic Kilmer projects. SAG-AFTRA confirmed that the production obtained the family’s permission and complied with the applicable requirement for estate consent. SAG-AFTRA
The law has moved quickly. California’s AB 1836 prohibits the commercial use of a deceased performer’s digital replica in films, television, games and recordings without permission from the estate. Its companion measure, AB 2602, restricts vague contractual claims over the digital likenesses of living performers. Governor of California
SAG-AFTRA’s 2026 television and theatrical agreement goes further. It strengthens consent and compensation rules, protects replicas from being used to cross a strike line and requires bargaining before a synthetic performer replaces a human role. Producers say synthetics should be used only when they provide “significant additional value.” The agreement took effect on July 1, 2026. SAG-AFTRA
These protections are necessary, but they answer the commercial question more readily than the artistic one. They determine who may authorise the ghost, who controls it and who gets paid. They cannot determine whether the result belongs to the actor.
An estate can license a likeness. It cannot reproduce judgment. Acting is not the arrangement of recognisable features; it is a sequence of choices made by a living person under specific conditions. A replica can imitate the residue of those choices without making any itself.
Kilmer represents the strongest possible case for digital resurrection. He wanted the role. His illness prevented him from performing it. His family approved the reconstruction and participated in the process. The production followed emerging legal and union rules. If the practice can ever be defended, it can be defended here.
That is precisely why the precedent matters. The next estate may be less careful. The next studio may have a more valuable franchise. “Completion” will become “continuation”; tribute will become inventory. A dead actor’s archive—every close-up, interview and discarded recording—will become raw material for performances without limit.
The future is no longer one in which Hollywood might bring its stars back. It already has. The harder question is what we are watching when the face belongs to an actor but the performance belongs to no one.
