A year after Val Kilmer’s death, the first trailer for As Deep as the Grave has turned a small independent film into one of Hollywood’s sharpest flashpoints over artificial intelligence. The footage, unveiled at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, features an AI-generated version of Kilmer in the role of Father Fintan, a priest and Native spiritual figure tied to the film’s story about archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris.
Writer-director Coerte Voorhees said Kilmer had signed on years earlier but grew too ill to shoot, and the production later rebuilt his performance using archival material with the approval of his children and coordination with SAG-AFTRA.
The trailer marks the latest turn in a project that first drew notice in March, when the filmmakers disclosed that Kilmer’s screen presence would be created through generative AI. Voorhees has argued that recasting would have changed the film too radically and said Kilmer’s family believed the actor wanted to remain part of the project. The movie is expected later this year, and the new footage makes clear that Kilmer’s digital performance is not a cameo; the filmmakers say he appears for 77 minutes.
That scale is why the reaction has been so intense. SAG-AFTRA said after the first reports that any digital replica must be transparent, properly authorized and aligned with performer rights and estate rights. California’s AB 1836, signed in 2024 and now in effect, bars the use of a deceased performer’s digital replica in film and sound recordings without prior estate consent. The union’s 2023 TV and theatrical contract also requires informed consent and compensation rules for digital replicas, including posthumous uses handled by an authorized representative.
The Kilmer case carries extra weight because the actor had already embraced AI voice tools during his lifetime after throat cancer damaged his speech. He partnered with a voice technology company in 2021, and that work fed public discussion during Top Gun: Maverick. This film pushes far past voice restoration into full performance recreation, which is why legal scholars and labor groups have treated it as a test case for consent, control and the limits of synthetic acting in mainstream filmmaking.
