This is a topic destined to become extremely important in the coming years: now that digital technology makes it possible to rejuvenate, even resurrect, an actor,.
Is it legitimate to produce films using these technologies? It is a moral question, but it is above all a gold mine: there have already been those who have put in production a film with James Dean (but not only ), and the recent advances also in terms of vocal reconstruction have allowed to rejuvenate Mark Hamill in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett , with increasingly astonishing results. The sky is the limit, and Bruce Willis understands that.
After starring in a series of Russian commercials via Deepfake, Bruce Willis, who recently retired after being diagnosed with aphasia , sold the rights to his image to Deepcake , a company that plans to make films and TV series with artificial intelligence. , bringing together living and dead actors on the screen. CEO Maria Chmir said the company is negotiating with film studios and heirs of famous movie stars to conclude similar deals:
We create digital celebrity cufflinks, and the crafting process does not require the physical presence of a celebrity on set. It means comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Kevin Hart can interact in one frame now.
The future of cinema?
The prospects are potentially revolutionary and devastating for the film industry as we know it today. We talked about it during our recent live on Twitch : if one day, in about twenty years, a producer wakes up and wants to make a new Indiana Jones adventure with a young Harrison Ford , he could do it. Deepcake and Respeecher would be enough , the software with which the voice of the young Mark Hamill was recreated and, recently, that of James Earl Jones in Obi-Wan Kenobi .
But there’s more: an actor could also decide to play two films at the same time, or never to grow old on the big screen (a bit like Tom Cruise , with less effort). Not to mention that any director could potentially work with their favorite stars from any historical era.
Science fiction, for now. But there is no doubt that there have been giant steps (think of the first experiments, like Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy ), and that sooner or later the time will come when digital reconstruction will be indistinguishable from reality. It will be a historic moment, for better or for worse; and Bruce Willis will be there as John McClane in Die Hard 10 .