A new independent film is putting a specific legal question in front of a mainstream audience. Val Kilmer, who died in 2025 after years of battling throat cancer, is set to appear in “As Deep as the Grave” through a generative AI performance. He was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, five years before his death but was too ill to ever reach the set. With consent from his estate and the blessing of his daughter Mercedes, director Coerte Voorhees is completing the film using AI to construct Kilmer’s performance from scratch.
The announcement drew immediate backlash. Some called it “sick and greedy.” Others said the family’s approval made it acceptable. Both reactions miss the more important question underneath: what does the law actually allow when a studio wants to put a dead actor on screen using AI?
Postmortem Publicity Rights: The Legal Foundation
Most people assume a celebrity’s image becomes public property after death. That is not how the law works in the United States. The majority of states recognise postmortem right of publicity, which is an inheritable legal right that gives an estate control over how a deceased person’s name, image, voice, and likeness are used for commercial purposes.
California is the most important jurisdiction for Hollywood. Under California Civil Code Section 3344, postmortem publicity rights are treated as a transferable asset, extending 70 years after death. Indiana offers the longest protection of any US state, covering likeness rights for a full century after a person dies. New York strengthened its law in 2021 to specifically include digital replicas.
What this means practically: Val Kilmer’s estate controls his image and voice for the next 70 years in California. No studio can use that likeness without permission, regardless of how the AI is generated. The technology does not create a legal loophole. It creates a new application of an existing right.
California’s 2024 Law Specifically Covers AI
California passed AB 1836 in 2024, targeted directly at the rise of AI-generated performances. The law restricts the use of AI digital replicas of deceased performers without written consent from their estates. It creates a right of action, meaning estates can pursue injunctive relief and financial damages against anyone who creates an AI version of a deceased person without authorisation.
The law was partly a response to early cases where AI tools were used to generate audio and visual likeness of celebrities without any estate involvement. AB 1836 makes the consent requirement explicit and enforceable in a way that older right-of-publicity statutes did not anticipate.
In the Val Kilmer case, the estate’s cooperation places the film on solid legal ground under California law. His daughter Mercedes Kilmer has stated publicly that she believes her father would have supported the project. Whether that reflects his actual wishes is impossible to verify, but legally, the estate’s written consent is what matters.
What Happens Without Consent
When studios or producers use AI to recreate a deceased performer without estate authorisation, the legal exposure is significant. The estate can seek a court order to stop distribution, claim any profits made from the unauthorised use, and pursue statutory damages depending on which state’s law applies.
This is not hypothetical. The Avatar AI likeness lawsuit involving Indigenous actor Q’orianka Kilcher demonstrated that courts treat unauthorised digital likeness use as a serious infringement, not a technicality. As AI generation tools become cheaper and more accessible, attorneys representing estates have become increasingly proactive about monitoring unauthorised uses.
The situation becomes more complicated when the original acting contract predates AI. Many older contracts include likeness rights provisions but do not specify whether those provisions cover AI-generated performances. A contract signed in 2005 granting a studio “likeness rights” almost certainly did not contemplate a situation where the actor’s face and voice could be rebuilt digitally and placed in new scenes the actor never filmed. That ambiguity is a growing source of litigation across Hollywood.
The Consent Question Is More Than Legal
Even when the law is satisfied, a harder question remains. Estate consent is meaningful, but estates are not the same as the person who died. A daughter, manager, or business partner may authorise an AI performance that the actor themselves would have refused. There is no mechanism to know.
Some actors have begun addressing this while alive. Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine are among those who have formally licensed their AI likeness rights, creating explicit written records of what they permit and what they prohibit. This approach gives studios clear guidance and removes post-death ambiguity.
Screen Actors Guild has negotiated provisions addressing AI likeness use for living performers. The equivalent protections for deceased performers remain patchwork, varying by state and dependent on how well-drafted the original contracts were.
The Val Kilmer Case Sets a Precedent
“As Deep as the Grave” is not the first film to use AI to recreate a deceased actor, but it is the most high-profile case to do so with full estate cooperation and under the clearest legal framework currently available. It will be watched closely by studios, estate attorneys, and actors’ unions trying to understand where the industry is heading.
The legal answer to whether this is permitted is straightforward: yes, when the estate gives written consent, the law in most major jurisdictions allows it. The harder debate, the one playing out in comment sections and industry panels, is whether legal permission is the right standard to apply.
For now, the law says consent from the estate is sufficient. As more AI resurrections follow, the pressure to establish clearer standards, perhaps requiring actors to record explicit AI use preferences before death, is only going to increase.