DEAD RINGER
How Hollywood is using AI to bring stars like James Earl Jones back from the dead – and why it’s left A-listers worried
But new rules mean production companies will need relatives’ permission to use a dead actor’s likeness
LATE, great Hollywood stars live on in their movies — but now they can keep WORKING on them too.
It has been revealed that Star Wars legend James Earl Jones, who voiced Darth Vader, signed a deal allowing Disney to use his distinctive tones in the sci-fi franchise after he died.
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The American, who passed away aged 93 last week, agreed for artificial intelligence to recreate his vocals.
But he is not the only illustrious film star whose career will outlive them.
James Dean, Oliver Reed, Carrie Fisher and Christopher Reeve have all been recreated using computer-generated imagery.
However raising the dead has sparked controversy.
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When the latest Alien movie Romulus was released last month, the digital reproduction of the late, British actor Sir Ian Holm outraged fans.
Ironically, the computer-generated reimagining of his android Ash was not considered real enough.
And last week it was revealed that film producer Kevin Francis, a friend of Peter Cushing, is suing Disney for using a digital likeness of the late actor in Star Wars prequel Rogue One, allegedly without the star’s permission.
The issue of replacing living actors with AI even led to a four-month strike last year by the US actors’ union Sag-Aftra.
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The actors, writers and crews went back to work after agreeing a deal to limit the use of AI actors.
As part of new rules to be introduced in California, Hollywood production companies will need relatives’ permission to use a dead actor’s likeness.
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Currently the law is a grey area and stars such as Samuel L Jackson are trying to prevent their image being tarnished in the future by ensuring contracts don’t allow their likeness to be used “in perpetuity”.
Here we look at the movie industry’s digital cloning wars.
James Dean (died 1955): Back To Eden, 2024
EVEN though James Dean had major roles in just three movies, he is one of the most famous faces in Hollywood.
His film debut in East Of Eden propelled him to fame before a car crash claimed his life at the age of 24 in 1955.
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His other two movies, Rebel Without A Cause and Giant, were released after his death.
Thanks to advances in AI, there are now attempts to expand his CV.
Dean will be in a new sci-fi movie titled Back To Eden.
Five years ago there were plans to put him in a movie called Finding Jack, but that was cancelled.
In the UK, an actor can only retain the copyright to their performance for 50 years after it was first shown, so for Dean that has long passed.
Paul Walker (died 2013): Fast & Furious 7, 2013
ACTION hero Paul Walker, 40, was in the middle of filming Fast & Furious 7 in 2013 when he died in an off-set, high-speed car crash.
His character Brian O’Conner had been in the blockbuster franchise from the start, so he couldn’t easily be written out.
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It was decided that Paul’s brothers Caleb and Cody would play him in his final scenes, but AI would be used to imprint the late star’s face on them.
In this case the motion-capture technology served an important purpose and was supported by his family.
Director James Wan said: “Having them on set has made us all feel that Paul is with us too.”
Peter Cushing (died 1994): Rogue One 2016
THE huge technological leaps in AI acting were evident in the 2016 Star Wars movie Rogue One.
It featured Peter Cushing as the ice-cold baddie Grand Moff Tarkin, who he played in the sci-fi franchise’s initial outing in 1977.
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The Hammer Horror legend died in 1994 aged 81, but the digital performance in Rogue One was so good you might have thought he had come back from the dead like a character from his Frankenstein days.
Last week one of Cushing’s old friends, film director Kevin Francis, announced he was suing Disney for using the actor’s likeness without his permission in Rogue One.
He claims to have had an agreement with Cushing, made in 1993, to control the use of his image.
Disney paid the actor’s estate about £28,000 for the AI appearance even though they felt his original contract gave them permission to use it.
Sir Ian Holm (died 2020): Alien: Romulus, 2024
SIR Ridley Scott’s Alien is one of the greatest sci-fis of all time and a key character is the android Ash, played by Sir Ian Holm.
He died four years ago aged 88 but this year’s Alien: Romulus includes a robot that looks like Ash but has the name Rook and a different voice.
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Producers asked the actor’s widow, Sophie de Stempel, if they could reproduce Sir Ian’s likeness with AI.
Director Fede Alvarez said: “We did it all with a lot of respect and always with the authorisation of his family who said, ‘We would love to see his likeness again’.”
Some critics did not feel the same. In a review for Slate, an online magazine that covers US culture and current affairs, Sam Adams asks: “Why let the dead rest when there’s IP (intellectual property) to be mined?”
And Chris Evangelista, editor of the SlashFilm website, said Rook was off-putting.
He wrote: “The recreated Holm never looks convincing. Every time the film focuses on him, it’s distracting and weird.”
Harold Ramis (died 2014): Ghostbusters: Afterlife 2021
FEW films could be as appropriately titled as this Ghostbusters 2021 reboot because it brought Harold Ramis back from the dead.
Best known as the genius Egon Spengler in the original 1984 film and its 1989 sequel.
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The actor had a rare blood disease and passed away in 2014 aged 69.
It took a huge team and various tricks to include Spengler in Afterlife.
Archive footage was scanned by a team at a firm called Character Lab and then digitally reworked to fit a stand-in actor who had been on set.
Original director Ivan Reitman also stood in as Spengler at times, wearing his Ghostbusting suit.
Carrie Fisher (died 2016): Star Wars IX 2019
STAR Wars fans were gobsmacked when Carrie Fisher returned to the big screen three years after she suffered a fatal heart attack in 2016.
But for her to appear in The Rise Of Skywalker, the script had to be rewritten around the audio recordings they already had and used digital wizardry for her image.
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Roger Guyett, visual effects supervisor on the film, told Syfy Wire: “When you see Carrie in Episode IX, it’s a live-action face with a digital hair, head and body.
Before her death, Carrie also appeared in 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story but didn’t perform in a single scene.
The actress gave her blessing for her likeness to be superimposed on the face of another actress, Ingvild Deila, who was wearing motion capture dots.
She was said to be very impressed with the outcome.
Oliver Reed (died 1999): Gladiator, 2000
DURING the making of Gladiator, legendary hellraiser Oliver Reed had kept a promise not to get drunk – until he was tempted into a drinking contest near the end of the shoot in Valletta, the capital of Malta.
The British star is said to have downed eight pints, half a bottle of whisky plus shots of rum before arm-wrestling five sailors and collapsing with a heart attack in May 1999.
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His death at the age of 61, left the film’s director Sir Ridley Scott with incomplete scenes featuring Oliver’s character Proximo, the tough, no-nonsense Gladiator trainer.
Using technology well ahead of its time, old footage of Oliver was added digitally to the face of a stand-in actor.
Without the benefit of modern AI it took much longer and cost a reported £2 million.
Christopher Reeve (died 2004): The Flash, 2023
IN the past few years there has been a trend in Hollywood for “multiverse” movies, where multiple versions of the same character appear from different universes.
For last year’s critically panned action sci-fi The Flash, DC Comics decided to throw Christopher Reeve’s Superman into the mix.
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To be fair, the cameo is so brief he appears and disappears almost at the speed of light.
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But superhero fans were not pleased that the American actor, who died from heart failure in 2004 aged 52, was added in using AI.
Especially, as his children, Will, Matthew and Alexandra Reeve said they were not consulted.
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