James Dean will star in a new movie, although his heirs don't want to

In 1957, to promote his film Plan 9 From Outer Space, director Ed Wood announced that Béla Lugosi appeared in it. That it was the last film in which the well-known actor had acted, who died a few months before. The reality, however, is that Ed Wood had used old material from Lugosi and introduced it in his film with shoehorn. And since it was imperative that this character appear in more scenes, Wood had hired his wife's chiropractor and ordered him to cover his face so that the public believed it was Lugosi. But it did not slip.

Bungles aside, the artifice of resorting to a double to replace an actor who died during a shoot is not uncommon. Brandon Lee, for example, died in 1993 due to technical negligence during the recording of The Raven and the producer decided that another actor would finish his scenes. On other occasions, digitalization of images has been used, as happened with Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014) or with Carrie Fisher in The Rise of Skywalker, from the Star Wars saga , in which they have been recycled shots of The Force Awakens. Sometimes studios choose a much more resounding path: when Marilyn Monroe passed away - in 1962 - while filming Something's got to give , 20th Century Fox canceled the film. And period

But the years have passed and the scenario has changed. Now the stage, in fact, is built with a chroma and a computer. And in this new framework there has been some lightening of the repairs of the producers according to what alternatives. At the end of the day, that the image of an actor who had committed to participate in a film is digitized makes perfect sense. But modernity gives us a script twist: the production of new films in which movie stars who died years ago act. As is the case, for example, with James Dean , who despite having died in 1955 will play a character in what will be his fourth film, Finding Jack, about the 10,000 military dogs abandoned after the Vietnam War.

The technique for the resurrection of James Dean is simple: images of the actor created digitally by computer (CGI) will be used. The difference with Fisher in Star Wars or Hoffman in The Hunger Games is that they did agree to act in those movies. But not James Dean. He never gave his consent for this role. And this is where the legal framework on which this dubious maze of mirrors is built comes into play . In the US, the so-called personality rights -which refer to the commercial use of what constitutes the identity of a person, such as his name, his voice or his image- are considered a property of the individual, but when he dies they become his property heirs

Worldwide XR is the company that manages those "personality rights" of James Dean. And given the possible big business that opens with the CGI, they have taken over the rights of 400 other celebrities, including myths such as Chuck Berry, Ingrid Bergman, Burt Reynolds and even Elvis Presley. Right now, Worldwide XR can sell the voice and appearance of any of these deceased stars to Hollywood. And if we take into account that Worldwide XR is not just any company, since it was born from the merger of the CMG Worldwide agency with the Observe Media studios, experts in the creation of digital content, the technical obstacles they will find to put to sing, dancing or acting to anyone will be very few.

But the thing do not ends there. Once the individual has died, personality rights are the property of the heirs only for a specific period of time, which depends on the laws of each state - in California it is 70 years. What opens the door to that, in a very short time, we can see a good number of stars of the golden age of Hollywood acting in films of the most varied . A situation about which actors like Chris Evans or Elijah Wood have already expressed their distaste.

It should be clarified, in any case, that the fact of this possibility does not mean that it will succeed. It may happen as with the concerts of musicians in hologram, who do not finish convincing anyone. Or, who knows, we may see Humphrey Bogart playing Terminator in 2027. "I sense this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Sarah Connor." We will always have Skynet.

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