Ask Peter 04/17/26

Ask Peter 04/17/26

Be honest! What do you really think of Hollywood using dead actors, digitally generated by AI, to star in films they never saw coming? What kind of people do that?

By Peter Travers

Share this post
The late Val Kilmer, digitally de-aged by AI, stars in “As Deep as the Grave”

Graverobbers—that’s the easy answer that comes to mind. But of course, there are no easy answers to the question of artificial intelligence. Take the latest case of AI resurrection. It involves the actor Val Kilmer, who died one year ago this month at age 65 after a long battle with throat cancer. And yet in the trailer for “As Deep As the Grave,” which writer-director Coerte Voorhees' debuted this Wednesday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, there is Kilmer—the star of “Top Gun,” “The Doors” and “Batman Forever”—in what Voorhees calls the “significant” role of Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist shown in youth and age. "Don't fear the dead, and don't fear me," the AI Kilmer says in the trailer.