The late Top Gun and Batman Forever actor Val Kilmer will make one last appearance on screen since his passing last year, with the help of generative AI.

The Heat star was cast in filmmaker Coerte Voorhees’ As Deep As The Grave in 2020, and was set to play Father Fintan, a catholic priest and Native American spiritualist. Due to Kilmer’s throat cancer and ongoing health struggles, he was never able to shoot anything for it.

Voorhees exclusively told Variety that the project was “very much designed around him. It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love for the Southwest,”

To finish the film, Voorhees has used generative AI to include Kilmer in the film, with permission from the Kilmer estate and Kilmer’s children, Mercedes and Jack.

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Voorhees said, “His family kept saying how important they thought the movie was and that Val really wanted to be a part of this. He really thought it was an important story that he wanted his name on. It was that support that gave me the confidence to say okay, let’s do this.

“He always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling. This spirit is something that we are honouring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part.”

“We really figured out that this is a major missing element,” added Voorhees. “Normally, we would just recast an actor. I’m all about working with our actors, and we have brilliant performances all throughout this movie. But we can’t roll the camera again. We don’t have the budget. We’re not a big studio film. So we had to think of innovative ways to do it. And we realised the technology is there for us.

As Deep As The Grave is based on the true story of Southwestern archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris and their excavations in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, to try to trace the history of the Navajo people.

Abigail Lawrie, Tom Felton, Wes Studi and Abigail Breslin star alongside the AI Kilmer. Val Kilmer is expected to be a ‘significant’ part of the film, his voice, younger images and footage from his final years being used to represent the character Father Fintan.

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