val kilmer appears in a new trailer for As Deep as the Grave, a historical drama that uses generative AI to recreate his performance after his death in 2025 following throat cancer. The footage was first shared on Wednesday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, where the film’s creators put the technology and the cast in front of buyers and exhibitors. The project centers on Ann Axtell Morris and her excavation of Canyon De Chelly in Arizona, but the revived val kilmer presence is already shaping the reaction.
How the AI performance was built
The filmmakers said Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, but was too sick to shoot the role. With the cooperation of his estate and his daughter Mercedes, the production used generative AI and archival material from the family to complete the performance. Coerte Voorhees, the writer and director, said the role was built around Kilmer’s Native American heritage and his ties to the Southwest, while producer John Voorhees said the team believed the technology was justified by necessity and family involvement.
Coerte Voorhees said the part is substantial and that the character appears in more than an hour of the movie. He also said the story resonated strongly with Kilmer, and that the family repeatedly stressed how important the film was to him. The trailer shows Kilmer at different ages, including as a spectral figure and as a younger man of the cloth.
What the trailer shows
The footage places val kilmer in several key moments, including a scene where he tells a child, “Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me. ” The trailer also includes dramatic images of excavations on cliff sides, buffalo moving across a plain, and a vehicle struggling through rapids. Along with Kilmer’s AI-generated role, the ensemble features Abigail Lawrie, Tom Felton, Abigail Breslin, Tatanka Means, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Wes Studi and Finn Jones.
Filmmakers defend the approach
The team behind the film said they relied on SAG guidelines and compensated Kilmer’s estate for his appearance. They framed the project as a limited use of AI tied to a specific creative need, while acknowledging broader fears in Hollywood that the technology could reduce acting jobs as studios look to lower costs., Mercedes Kilmer said her father would have wanted to be included in the film and that he viewed emerging technologies with optimism as a way to expand storytelling.
Mercedes Kilmer said that spirit is being honored in this project, which she said her father was an integral part of. That statement places the film in a sensitive middle ground: a high-profile AI experiment, but one presented by the family and filmmakers as an act of inclusion rather than replacement.
What happens next for val kilmer and the film
The trailer has now turned As Deep as the Grave into one of the most closely watched titles coming out of CinemaCon this week. For now, the key question is how audiences will respond once the film reaches them, especially as the use of val kilmer in AI form becomes the center of attention as well as the story’s main talking point. The filmmakers are betting that the family’s cooperation, the estate’s involvement and the scale of the role will be enough to answer the hardest questions before release.
