Val Kilmer Stars in New Film a Year After His Death

One year after Val Kilmer died from throat cancer, his face is on screen again — not in archival footage, not in a cameo spliced from an old film, but in an entirely new role, for 77 minutes, generated by artificial intelligence from photographs and home movies that his children provided to the filmmakers.

"As Deep as the Grave," directed by writer-director Coerte Voorhees, is the story of Southwestern archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris, who spent decades excavating sites in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona in the early twentieth century, attempting to trace the history of the Navajo people. Kilmer had been cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, before his death in April 2025. He was too ill to shoot. So Voorhees and his production team built his performance using AI reconstruction rather than recast the role.

The Kilmer family — his son Jack and daughter Mercedes — signed off on the project and contributed the source materials used to train the reconstruction model. That consent matters both ethically and legally, and it separates "As Deep as the Grave" from more controversial posthumous AI applications in which estates or heirs have played no active role. Variety reported on 18 April 2026 that the family was "actively involved" in reviewing early cuts of the AI-generated performance before production finalised.

“Variety reported on 18 April 2026 that the family was "actively involved" in reviewing early cuts of the AI-generated performance before production finalised.”

The reaction has been sharply divided. One unnamed actress involved in the film told The Cooldown on 17 April that the project was "gross," arguing that no level of family consent makes it acceptable to generate an actor's performance after their death, because the actor cannot advocate for the characterisation, adjust their delivery, or consent in the moment that matters — the moment of creative decision-making on set. This is a substantive objection, not mere squeamishness: posthumous AI performances conflate consent to appear in a project (which the estate granted) with consent to a specific portrayal (which Kilmer, who was too ill to engage, could never give).

The counter-argument is that creative collaborators frequently speak for absent or deceased artists — editors shape performances, directors use footage in ways actors never saw, studios release cuts that differ from directors' visions. Film is already a deeply mediated art form, and the addition of AI generation may represent a difference of degree rather than kind. Voorhees, speaking to Variety, positioned his approach as an extension of the film reconstruction work that has been standard in documentary filmmaking for decades.

The film also raises a question that the entertainment industry has been circling since AI tools became commercially viable: whether an AI-generated performance can qualify for awards consideration. Gold Derby reported on 18 April 2026 that the filmmakers are weighing a posthumous Academy Awards campaign for Kilmer's performance, which would force the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to clarify rules that were written entirely before AI-generated performances existed.

The film itself — as a historical drama about Canyon de Chelly and the Morris excavations — has received modest advance attention outside of the AI performance controversy. Whether it would be in the conversation at all without Kilmer's AI-reconstructed presence is the uncomfortable question that the project cannot fully answer. The technology is doing significant marketing work here, and "As Deep as the Grave" is likely to be remembered as the first major test case for posthumous AI performance regardless of its critical reception.

What this signals about the broader industry is less ambiguous. Writers' Guild and Screen Actors Guild contracts negotiated in 2023 and updated in 2025 include provisions around digital likenesses and posthumous use, but those provisions govern studio productions under the major contracts. Independent films like "As Deep as the Grave" operate under different terms, and the legal framework governing what studios, independent producers, and AI vendors can do with deceased performers' digital likenesses is still being written — largely in the courts, and occasionally in the edit bay.

The trailer is available on major streaming platforms. "As Deep as the Grave" opens in limited release this spring.