Val Kilmer resurrected via AI in controversial new movie trailer | Films | Entertainment

Last month, the first look at an AI Val Kilmer performance in an upcoming Western split the internet.

Now the first trailer has launched today at CinemaCon, at a special event attended by the Daily Express in Las Vegas.

During a Q&A, the filmmakers behind As Deep As The Grave, which is yet to obtain a distributor, shared how the late Batman star was signed on to play Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, prior to his death from throat cancer last year.

Ahead of the shoot, the casting director was simply told, “He can’t do it and he’s really upset”.

Little did they know how ill Val was and the film was shut down just two days later. But following his death, the Hollywood star’s family endorsed the idea of recreating him via AI and provided extensive archival material for his performance. It turns out Val “documented everything.”

If you watch the trailer above, it’s really quite uncanny how Kilmer has been resurrected across what will be three ages and for a total of 1 hour and 17 minutes of the film’s runtime. Speaking with Coerte and John Voorheers, the brothers behind the film, we asked how the actors, like Tom Felton (who plays real-life Indiana Jones Earl Morris), acted opposite a Kilmer who wasn’t there. Was there a tennis ball like Marvel’s Rocket Raccoon?

Coerte, who wrote and directed the picture, told us exclusively: “If we were shooting, yes, when you’re in physical production. But we’re in a post-production process.” John, the producer, clarified: “Val is an AI generated character, everything beyond that is movie editing techniques to blend him into the story. What we didn’t want was him to be a cameo. We didn’t want him to just drop in, that’s not very faithful to what the story originally was. So he’s actually be woven into the story. Things we’ve already shot, we blend him into those scenes using this technology. When you see it, you’ll see what we mean because there are scenes where he’s interacting with people we shot. By the way, this happens all the time with movies when you re-edit things in different contexts, so this is just another iteration of that.”

Although technologically impressive (they spoke of replacing his 1990s haircut with a 1920s do in one scene), just how ethical is it to resurrect a dead star and recreate them with AI in a movie they’re “acting” in?

During the Q&A, John shared that Val had given his family their blessing (“It was an enthusiastic yes” from them) and that they wanted to go about it as ethnically as possible, following the SAG guidelines of the three Cs: Consent, compensation and collaboration. The producer shared how they went through a painstaking process of drafting and redrafting the AI Val, admitting “it was a bold risk to take”.

Asked by the moderator if this was truly a Val Kilmer performance, Coerte replied diplomatically: “Val Kilmer influenced this performance”. Another one of the film’s producers in the audience told us, regardless of how controversial the AI recreation is, we’d all better get used to it, as this groundbreaking new filmmaking is coming whether we like it or not.

As Deep As the Grave is set to be released later in 2026.