{"id":2343980,"date":"2026-03-24T19:31:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2343980"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:31:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:31:43","slug":"val-kilmer-and-immortal-ip-stars-private-equitys-next-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/val-kilmer-and-immortal-ip-stars-private-equitys-next-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Val Kilmer and Immortal IP Stars: Private Equity\u2019s Next Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>POSTHUMOUS PLAYER <\/strong>An AI-assisted version of the late Val Kilmer appears in the upcoming film <\/span>As Deep as the Grave. (The Ankler illustration; First Line Films)<\/span><\/div>\n

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I cover Hollywood and AI. I wrote about <\/span>Ben Affleck selling his AI company<\/a> to Netflix, the enertainment industry\u2019s meltdown over <\/span>ByteDance\u2019s Seedance<\/a>, and how Hollywood choked the rise of <\/span>OpenAI video model Sora<\/a>.<\/span><\/h5>\n
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There was always<\/strong> something spectral about <\/span>Val Kilmer<\/strong>\u2019s late career \u2014 the altered, gravelly voice after throat cancer, the physical limitations, the sense that the performance was being assembled from fragments of a once-commanding screen presence. Which is why the news that Kilmer will appear in a new film after his death doesn\u2019t feel like a rupture so much as a continuation, albeit one that formalizes something Hollywood has been inching toward for years.<\/span><\/p>\n

The film, <\/span>As Deep as the Grave (formerly <\/span>Canyon del Muerto), is an independent period drama about archaeologists <\/span>Ann<\/strong> and <\/span>Earl Morris<\/strong> and their excavation work in the American Southwest. Kilmer had been cast as Father Fintan, a priest tied to Native American spirituality, but never filmed his scenes due to health issues and production delays. Rather than recast the role, the filmmakers, with the cooperation of his estate and family, opted to construct the performance using generative AI models trained on archival footage, photographs and voice replication technology. Writer-director <\/span>Coerte Voorhees<\/strong> has said he built the role specifically for Kilmer, and now Kilmer is being rebuilt for the film, which is produced by Voorhees and his brother and is seeking a distributor. That inversion represents something new: the separation of performance from the physical presence of the performer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hollywood has flirted with this idea before, most notably with the widely criticized attempt to cast <\/span>James Dean<\/strong> in a Vietnam War drama called <\/span>Finding Jack, announced in 2019 but never finished. That project had estate approval and a clear technological roadmap, but it collapsed under backlash from actors, discomfort from audiences and \u2014 more important \u2014 financing and distribution hesitation. The industry treated it as a line that shouldn\u2019t be crossed. In retrospect, it looks more like a line that couldn\u2019t yet be monetized. The tools weren\u2019t ready, and the audience hadn\u2019t been conditioned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Related:<\/h5>\n
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\"Eternal<\/div>\n
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Eternal Celebrities: The Multi-Billion Opportunity Coming <\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Now both conditions have changed. Digital doubles, de-aging and AI-assisted voice work are are standard practice. The line between captured and constructed performance has blurred to the point of irrelevance. <\/p>\n

And once that line disappears, the underlying economics shift with it as a new business model is about to hit the industry.<\/p>\n

Below, I break down:<\/p>\n