As a freaky Val Kilmer doppelganger stars in a new western and faux starlet Tilly Norwood is set for her feature debut, experts are split on whether mainstream adoption is a long way down the line – or just around the corner

‘Don’t fear the dead – and don’t fear me.” An exact facsimile of a young Val Kilmer, not quite dead and not quite alive, utters that baiting line in the trailer for the new western As Deep as the Grave. Director Coerte Voorhees knows exactly what he is doing – this is an AI-created version of the late actor, approved by his family but bringing with it a heap of controversy about whether such technology could make flesh-and-blood thespians redundant.

Not just yet, judging by the extended glimpse of the film released earlier this year: it looks like a thirtysomething Kilmer, if a robot version had been sent back to the 1920s American wilderness by Skynet and, as well as being strangely rigid, had forgotten to download his voice, let alone his signature air of spacey shrewdness. Kilmer’s estate signed off on it, citing his enthusiasm for new technology that expands storytelling, but surely he would have been dismayed by this freaky doppelganger.

Relatives of Hollywood legend say her doppelganger could now be used for more glamorous roles

She shimmered in Hollywood’s silent movie era and lit up the first talkies – now Greta Garbo may be about to star in cinema’s new AI age.

More than a century after her screen debut and decades after her ashes were laid to rest in a Swedish woodland cemetery, the Hollywood superstar’s descendants are ready to consider an AI version of her taking a 21st-century film role.

This gave a young Cruise entry into the A-list, as the brilliant, courageous rule-breaking pilot, frenemy of Val Kilmer and in love with Kelly McGillis

‘This gives me a hard-on”; “Don’t tease me”; “I want some BUTTS!” The comedy takes on sexual identity in Top Gun have become so widespread after Quentin Tarantino’s monologue on the subject that it would be revisionist now to claim that this film was 100% heterosexual. But maybe the joke arose from cinephiles’ civilian naivety about what military life and language have always been like in reality.

In the glory days of the Reagan administration, producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer optioned a magazine article about the US Navy Fighter Weapons School in San Diego, California; this trained an elite corps of pilots in dogfight confrontations with the enemy, with the sword-of-honour first prize being nicknamed “Top Gun”. Tony Scott was appointed to direct and 23-year-old Tom Cruise broke through into the A-list as Lt Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a brilliant pilot whose dad flew in ’Nam and who infuriates yet entrances the uptight high-ups with his instinctive, courageous, rule-shattering brilliance. One cigar-smoking commanding officer almost does nothing in the film but bark “God-DAMMIT, Maverick!” as a junior officer reports Maverick’s latest piece of aerial cheek.

The latest in our series of writers drawing attention to their most rewatched comfort films is a celebration of an easily quotable western

On 26 October 1881, four men – gambler and lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and his tubercular dentist friend Henry “Doc” Holliday – strode through the silver mining town of Tombstone, Arizona, and advanced on an alley next to Fly’s Boarding House and Photography Studio, just west of the OK Corral.

Thirty seconds of gunfire later, two men were dead and another lay dying; over the years, what was, depending on your viewpoint, either a law enforcement operation or a triple homicide became romanticized as a heroic tale of good defeating evil.

Footage of As Deep As the Grave screened in the US, featuring an authorised visual deepfake of the actor who died in 2025

A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor.

Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings.

As Deep As the Grave, the true story of 1920s archeologists, will bring late actor back with support from his estate

Val Kilmer will be the latest Hollywood star to be resurrected by AI. The acting legend, who died last year at age 65, will star in the drama As Deep As the Grave.

Kilmer was attached to the project prior to his death from throat cancer.

The latest entry in our series of writers picking their most rewatched comfort films is a nostalgic trip back to 1995

I meet up at least once a year with a group of university friends. We pick a city, descend on it and then leave 48 hours later, often a little worse for wear. I would say about 60% of all communication on these trips is quotes from Michael Mann’s 1995 heist thriller, Heat. Screaming like Al Pacino’s coked-up Los Angeles police detective Vincent Hanna or calmly saying “I have a woman” like Robert De Niro’s robotic master thief Neil McCauley if any of my friends ask me about my wife.

The comedian and film-maker Stanley Sievers did a skit about a guy whose life is destroyed because his whole personality is the film Heat. I laughed along with that awkwardly, while considering just how many times I said “the action is the juice” the last time I met up with my friends.