Says Coerte Voorhees, the writer and director of "As Deep as the Grave," quoted in "Val Kilmer Resurrected by AI to Star in ‘As Deep as the Grave’ Movie — First Look" (Variety).
There’s still a heated debate surrounding AI, with some parts of the creative community concerned that the technology will lead to job losses and worries that actors’ likenesses will be used without their consent. The brothers know that their decision may draw criticism, but they hope that “As Deep as the Grave” will show how AI can be used ethically. They also note that the production relied on SAG guidelines and compensated Kilmer’s estate for his appearance.
I presume there will be outrage.
Posts
78 comments:
…as Herzog says AI movies are completely flat- not worried…I think people who make flat movies should be worried…
The money guys have found ways to extend copyrights longer and longer and longer. They are going to find a way to profit from image cash cows as long as possible too.
And as pioneered by the post-WW2 corporations (of the Boomer era), future generations will be squeezed out and have no chance to develop a fan following or profit.
Automated Intelligence is a gigawatt replacement of Anthropogenic Intelligence.
I don't think it should be "controversial" to make movies using AI characters. Filmmakers should be able to make movies any way they want -- it's their movie and people can choose whether or not to see it.
The LEAST compelling argument against AI is that it means fewer jobs for actors. For that matter, animation means fewer jobs for actors, costumers, and makeup artists. CGI means fewer jobs for stuntmen. The automobile meant fewer jobs for makers of buggy whips.
When I prompt google, I get hits on the movie Simone. I saw a bit of another one, The Congress with Robin Wright, 2013. While she is still young and beautiful, an actress signs away the rights to use her likeness. Many photos and measurement are taken, and then she has no right to appear in public, at least for any kind of remuneration, as "herself."
AI will be irresistible.
You will want it, resort to it, prefer it, love it, and then it will kill you.
This is outrageous!
You can put any actor in history in a new role.
John Wayne as Pee Wee in "Pee Wee Goes to the Moon".
I presume there will be outrage
Sounds like the title of Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie:
-- There Will Be Blood
-- One Battle After Another
-- I Presume There Will Be Outrage
This is outrageous!
You should see what they're doing with Snoopy these days!
Didn't they do this with Lord Olivier, decades ago?
Dead man walking? No, dead man acting.
Now they can go back and redo some movies with the right stars. Lets substitute:
Brando for Henry Fonda in Mr. Roberts
Brando for Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Marilyn Monroe for Judy Holiday in Born Yesterday.
Rich but dead Hollywood types most hurt by this? DGAF. Learn to code MFers.
A future with no more Robert De Niros? Where do I sign?
Heck, most of the big earners can't work without AI de-aging effects, so the objections will be hollow and self-serving as usual.
“I presume there will be outrage.”
Get over it. Live actors are dead. They can’t even compete with anime anymore, much less AI.
This Hollywood DEI stuff is crazy. I “saw” Carrie Fisher in Rise of Skywalker. What is wrong with giving a role to a living person?
Has anyone seen news stories that show AI in a positive light? All I see is negative, negative, negative. AI is seen as mostly positive in Asia but as negative here. Why?
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but when I see nothing but negative news stories and tweets about AI, it makes me think the goal is to hamper US AI in order to give an advantage to foreign AI.
Interviewer: An excerpt from Carl French's latest film. Carl, we are all a little mystified by your claim that your new film stars Marilyn Monroe--
French: It does, yes.
Interviewer: ...who died over ten years ago.
French: That's correct.... we dug her up, and gave her a screen test - a mere formality, in her case - and--
Interviewer: Can she still act?
French: Well, she still has this enormous, kind of indefinable... No.
I see it now -- Twenty-First Century Grok presents "The Flight of the Phoenix", starring AI Jimmy Stewart as the grisled has-been space pilot who crash lands his refurb Starship Block 57 transport in the remote Amazonis Planitia, with an all-star all-dead supporting cast, including AI Ernest Borgnine, AI Richard Attenborough, and AI Hardy Kruger as the abrasive underachieving rocket engineer who persuades the survivors to build a new spacecraft from the wreckage of the old, only to discover that all his professional work was done for Estes Industries.
Interviewer: But surely she was cremated.
French: Our Marilyn Monroe isn't even scorched, and she has aged a day since "Some Like It Hot".
Hey Quaestor. I'd watch that on PPV stream.
French: We've improved her nose job, and the viewer can dial-in a preferred bustline from 35C to a 44 Double D, if you're into that sort of thing.
I can knock out the screenplay in a week, If Musk will provide the seed money, we can get this green-lit by April.
His family got paid. I don't see a problem.
One of the new Ghostbusters movies (not the chick one) used a digital Harold Ramis in some of it. Well, more here.
This isn’t a slippery slope, it will be an avalanche. There is really no stopping this.
Live actors are so 20th Century. It's not like their are non-dead actors out there looking for work, is it?
So it's a cartoon?
Walter Miller, 71 years ago. "The Darfstellar" novella
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13555496-command-performance
The LEAST compelling argument against AI is that it means fewer jobs for actors
Yes. Wallace and Grommet mean fewer jobs for actors but nobody’s complaining about them…that I know of….
On the upside, AI will allow a limitless number of Fred Astaires to dance with a limitless number of vacuums.
Bagoh, in "The Darfstellar" an artificial actor almost kills a human actor.
I am really missing Laslo S. right now. You there?
I contend and will continue to contend that the people most at risk of AI vis-a-vis Hollywood are actors, not writers. Most of the population is comfortable with video games and animation, so this ain't much different, especially when the last movie star is gone. What will always be necessary is a script, and I haven't yet not laughed at a prompt I've given any of the LLMs for even one scene, let alone 120 pages.
Don’t need Hollywood anymore.
This concern is partially moot. There are only 7 dramatic plots. Every Hollywood idea from the last 100 years has been remade twice or more (B&W -> Color -> Musical -> Cartoon -> Serialized TV/Cable/Streaming). The new catalog was already competing with an ever-growing back catalog.
Per Guardians of the Galaxy -- our era will be known for creating "the Classics," or a golden, long-gone age. AI will provide low-cost derivative fan fiction moving forward. It'll have "too perfect" characters, bodies, and special effects, so they'll start faking old-school wardrobe accidents, continuity errors, minatures, and scratched lenses. With AI.
Then we'll all be permanently confused -- see BladeRunner.
Mary Beth said...
Has anyone seen news stories that show AI in a positive light? All I see is negative, negative, negative. AI is seen as mostly positive in Asia but as negative here. Why?
I work for a large corporation headquartered in Europe that does mostly engineering work. We recently had a team meeting with a VP in Engineering. The VP asked if any of us had successfully used AI to find cost savings.
This is a tricky question, because we use what used to be called “machine learning” regression algorithms to do benchmark cost analysis on a regular basis. This does reduce preliminary design work and allows for very fast decision making. However, this particular question was in regards to LLM based AI tools. Those we have used and, even setting aside major problems (such as getting numerators and denominators flipped), we haven’t found much utility even in shortening documentation efforts. The general consensus is LLM AI is like having an intern or new graduate to do research. It saves some time finding information, but you spend so much time checking the work, that you don’t always save time overall.
That’s anecdotal. However, to the second part of your question which I didn’t quote, I don’t think it is about ceding advantage to Asia. It simply isn’t providing the results as promised at this time. You can see similar issues outside engineering. Look at the various legal pleadings that have significant errors, such as named cases that don’t actually exist.
That’s the usefulness aspect of AI. If you want to get into technical issues such as cost, availability of hardware (processing and memory), energy needs, and fresh water usage; the story simply gets worse at scale. There are numerous countries already struggling to meet energy and fresh water demands per COP 15 and current needs. They can’t support the demand AI data centers would require. You aren’t hearing about those problems, because they don’t want to give up any AI advantage to Asia.
It’s early days, so the future might find more utility from AI as promised. However, I’d compare the current situation to the first modern EVs. The first ones (e.g. Nissan Leaf) worked, but nobody wanted them. The current generation of EV’s (e.g. Lucid Air or Tesla Plaid) compete with hyper-cars in performance at reasonable consumer prices. And still, many people reject them…
If the dead can vote, they can act. Personally I am waiting for a new Bogart movie
Outrage is good. It raises exposure.
Quien es mas outrageous?
Fake outrage? or, AI outrage?
I guess the positive news is, the A.I. film experience has nowhere to go, but toward improvement. The picture in the story doesn't look like him. And I find the most unrealistic aspect of A.I. imagery tends to be the eyes.
@Leland --
YES, AI serves as the world's best intern. With models derived from a broad swath of mixed-quality human products, it can instantly collect a reasonable selection of mainstream documents for any topic. It can then summarize with poor awareness of dead ends, misinterpretations, and humor.
I see AI's main value as bringing novices up to conversant awareness on any topic in record time. It is akin to first-year college "Education 101" survey courses that smart people easily ace by reading a textbook.
For anything of true professional quality or challenge, without a critical review and true expertise AI misleads and results in rework time. My wife does that with the output of her mediocre colleagues too -- double pay for the same task.
Thank you for your answer, Leland. Outside of whether AI is useful now, or has the potential to be useful, are you seeing news stories about it that are positive? I haven't searched out articles, so maybe all I'm seeing is the sensational stuff that gets shared, but there seems to be an effort to make it look evil, not just non-useful.
It's a fad right now, isn't it? Everybody is imagining the science fiction part of A.I., the limitless potential. 'Oooh, I can dial up Star Wars and make Raquel Welch as Princess Leia', and so on.
Part of Hollywood's magic is its variety, and the unexpected, sometimes hammy turns it can take. The modern product, rife with franchises and sequels and prequels, has become slicker and at the same time, duller, with the pervasive use of computers. It's not better, having lost its artistic merit, its individual talents on both sides of the camera. Like popular music, it's become formulaic. Genius no longer has the latitude to find expression. It's a fast-food product, not an epicurean discovery. If Hollywood wants to prosper, they'll have to bring back the chefs, and let them run the kitchen.
If Val's family was okay with it, I don't know why anybody else's opinion matters.
“and compensated Kilmer’s estate for his appearance.”
Which explains why his family thought it was important. If can regurgitate a dead actor like a Ronco greatest hits LP, why wouldn’t you cash in? Shit, it’s not unthinkable that an actor could become a star again years after their death.
Not as much outrage as there will be if Val doesn't vote Democrat in the June primary election!
Actor Intelligence (AI)
The Diverse, diverse Choices... choices of ethical religions. All's fair...
I was watching Grand Prix (1966) with James Garner the other night and realized I prefer its racing scenes to any CGI effects. Practical driving and stunt work are about bodies, machines, and environment interacting under real physical constraints in real time. That’s a kind of skill I appreciate and enjoy watching.
CGI also requires real expertise in design, physics, lighting, animation, simulation, and compositing, but those are skills I’m largely indifferent to.
Watching actors work their craft is a two-tiered experience for me. If the acting is good, I’m absorbed in the story. Afterward, I think about the skill the actor employed. There’s that scene in The Godfather where Lee Strasberg asked for a smaller piece of cake: such a minor detail, yet it made me enjoy the scene more and, in retrospect, admire his instincts as an actor.
By contrast, AI manipulating an actor’s visage may be a monumental technical achievement, but it will leave me cold.
I don't think the issue really is that studios will use actors' images without compensation but, rather, that new and present actors won't be needed at all within the decade. If you haven't become a famous actor by 2030, you never will be.
Not really caring about movies, I don't really care if all the actors get replaced by AI. And since most of them appear to be pricks, well …
@Yancey Ward --
I'd say that if one didn't become a famous actor before the Great DEI Wokening of 2015 or COVID in 2020 then they'll never be in the same fame class.
The old era of big MGM stars faded long ago, with Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt the last men to have massive mainstream hits. The film industry then descended into Marvel Mania and put established actors (e.g., Robert Downey Jr.; Hugh Jackman) into plastic outfits (Iron Man; Wolverine) until people's eyes glazed over.
The Great DEI Wokening happened in part because Hollywood ran out of ideas and their mainstream audience shrank, and in part because of TDS.
Bring back Clark Gable, the Duke, Perry Mason, et alia.
Mary Beth, no. To the extent I’ve seen positive news stories, they are more often regurgitating some AI companies press release. Of course, they want to talk it up. I do think you have to qualify “positive news story” a bit. For instance, I’ve read some stories of companies laying off people that can be replaced by AI.
Those read as negative because of job loss, but from an AI utility discussion, it shows positive use for AI. I see them akin to the stories in the 80s and 90s about robot manufacturing taking away jobs. They did, but not as much as cheap human labor overseas. Today, few complain about robot assisted manufacturing and consider the robots safer for handling large and or dangerous operations.
I have been interested in computers my entire life. I can find plenty of positive articles on AI in trade journals. However, I’ve been reading those same stories for over a decade. I’ll give you an example, since we are also talking movies. In the first Mission Impossible movie in 1996, there is a scene where Ving Rhames character is talking about using the new Pentium chips with AI processing. These were just pre-processors, but they called it AI back then. I assume you don’t mean those “positive” news stories.
I doubt AI could have resulted in the Doc Holiday portrayal Kilmer did. Having his likeness in a movie is not the same as having Val. Even if AI could replicate all his past work and make him like that, there is no way that they could make the character they are putting Val in, be that deep and complex and hit all the right notes. I don't yearn for AI versions of past stars. maybe they will be interesting because it will capture their mannerisms and quirks and place them in interesting settings. I will watch based on how interesting the story is. If the AI can make the characters compelling, all the better, but I won't care who is playing the character. I won't watch because AI Val is in it, I will watch if I think the character is interesting.
OM: " I don't really care if all the actors get replaced by AI. And since most of them appear to be pricks, well...."
As AI becomes more advanced, we'll have AI 'stars' with individual personalities. Producers will decide whether they want completely synthetic Biff Morgenstern or completely synthetic Chad Billingham to be the leading 'man' in their next picture. And since their source material will be the current crop of pricks, well....CC, JSM
There was a group photograph that was a bit of an internet meme a few years back that consisted of about 200 actors and actresses whose careers had spanned a period from 1930 to the day the photograph was taken on a studio lot in 1989. The game was to name as many of the people in the photograph as you could. No such photograph will be made in the next 50 years.
‘How can AI be used ethically’…
AI is in its infancy. We have to protect it from the Cesar Chavez of the world.
As AI becomes more advanced, we'll have AI 'stars' with individual personalities. Producers will decide whether they want completely synthetic Biff Morgenstern or completely synthetic Chad Billingham to be the leading 'man' in their next picture. And since their source material will be the current crop of pricks, well....
Sort of like the WWE method of determining which hunk of flesh is a heel or a face. And we will all flock to the tabloids to see what drama is happening between this AI avatar and that one. Who is trading microbits with whom, who is getting how many terabytes in the separation, etc.
Is the AI a modulated overlay or constructed from anthropogenic primitives? A sampled or created mimic?
Something seems right about the most arrogant professions being replaced first. Hollywood is in the 5th century Roman period right now and AI is the German tribes.
Whew, got that in just in time.
AI is going to do to movies what Napster did music. Kill both the expense and the profit sides. You will be able to quickly and cheaply test out any idea, and see how it looks, adjust, and do it again. Something that would cost hundreds of millions previously.
The christopher reeve image from the flash was bad enough
Let his performances remain
No need to duplicate deceased. AI will create actors that have their own fan following. People will accept it as normal and have their faves. Strange to us, but normal for youngers, just like cell phones, internet, 500 streaming movie choices , electric cars, desktop printers, airbags, bicycle helmets. Gay marriage, single moms, and daylight savings time.
The Idoru William Gibson was ahead of the story, as usual.
Pull up Key Largo. Look at the introduction of Johnny Rocco starting about 25 minutes in. Watch what Huston and Robinson do, on either side of the camera. They're talking to each other, without words, while they're both killing it, in the scene. A.I. will never be able to do this.
Leland, an AI is evil story - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud
(I think there are parts missing to this news story that, once known, will make it make more sense.)
It's all the fault of the AI! It's not just spying on us, it's lying about what we're doing. Things like this, along with the "they're taking our jobs" and the data centers using all of the water.
Trans marriage? Yes, political congruence ("=") is a bigots' retreat. A Pro-Choice ethical religion. Civil unions for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #LustWins #HateLovesAbortion
You don’t need AI to commit fraud on a grandmother. You just don’t need a moral compass. But AI does help impersonate voices.
Eva Marie said...
I was watching Grand Prix (1966) with James Garner the other night ...
Because Eva Marie Saint is in it? She's still alive. You're not her? At 101 years old?
Kilmer made some really crummy low budget flicks at his New Mexico place -- like the one where fascist oligarchs are trying to stop illegal immigration (Dude, they love their cheap labor). This could actually be a step up for his career.
In the future (if we don't destroy ourselves or run out of energy), people will be using AI to create and watch any film they can imagine. What would that do for Hollywood?
Some Third Reich things are banned; others aren't.
The "Panzerlied" for instance has been in the Bundeswehr repertoire since the 1950s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNLGRrR0QGI
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