Peter Cushing’s resurrection 22 years after his death for the spin-off film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is at the centre of a legal battle over control of his image.
Special effects were used to digitally recreate Cushing’s character, Grand Moff Tarkin, from the original Star Wars film.
The makers of Rogue One are being sued by a film producer who was one of Cushing’s oldest friends. Kevin Francis claims the actor agreed not to grant permission for anyone to reproduce his appearance through special effects without his authorisation.
The Disney group, which made Rogue One, failed on Monday to have Francis’s claim for “unjust enrichment” dismissed at the High Court in London. Cushing died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 81. Special effects were used to recreate his appearance with the British actor, Guy Henry, 63, performing as his body double.
Francis’ company, Tyburn Film Productions, is suing the Disney subsidiary Lucasfilm, which owns the rights to Star Wars, and Lunak Heavy Industries (UK), the producer of Rogue One. He also brought claims against the executors of Cushing’s estate, who have both died, and Associated International Management, the agency that represented Cushing until his death.
Cant to see the future corporate wars over who owns the rights to Keanu Reeves likeness
The Law Comes to Tarkintown
Isnt it funny how we might be really reaching the end of history not politically, but culturally? Once AI is sufficiently advanced that any lizard-brained failson movie exec or record exec or advertising exec can just type their half-formed idiot ideas into a giant plagiarism machine that will scrape content from real human artists and incestuous data from other AI projects, culture will just form an ouroboros folding in on itself forever.
Guy Henry was already perfect for the role, all of this was pointless, but Disney NEEDED to test the ethnically dubious waters so they could go hogwild with this stuff now. And I say disney specifically because all of their film studios are using this tech now. RO was the test case.
You know what George did for EPIII? He put a guy in makeup to look like Cushing and had him out of focus. Lucas had a better case for using Cushing’s likeness on account of actually knowing him and iirc Cushing saying that he wished he had pushed for Tarkin to live cause he wanted to come back to star wars as soon as a sequel was announced. Yet Lucas has come out against digital actors, much as he loves new technology more than story or writing, he knows there are godamn lines
"A computer can duplicate Tom Hanks, for example, and we already use that technology a little for stunts and difficult scenes.
"But if you bring back Marilyn Monroe, what you would have is a caricature.
Lucas is himself a pioneer of digital special effects
"You could do it but you can’t get a perfect actor.
“Acting is a human endeavour and the amount of talent and craft that goes into it is massive - and can a composite reproduce that?”
He added: “The voice would have to be dubbed and what was produced on screen would ultimately be the work of an animator.”
The director was one of the first to make extensive use of digital technology when he used computer-generated special effects in the original Star Wars film in 1977.
But he said that recreating Hollywood greats would be a step too far.
"I can’t see any reason to recreate John Wayne or Monroe.
“People don’t want to see an imitation of someone who was a strong presence in real life,” said Lucas.
Can’t wait to see the future corporate wars over who owns the rights to Keanu Reeves likeness.
And then there will be the “Fight for Keanu” comedy which they hope will become a (licensed?) franchise.
I’m no legal scholar but all of human history has been anti-necromancy. I would assume this one of the few truly “human nature” traits. I would argue that digital necromancy is bad.
Cant to see the future corporate wars over who owns the rights to Keanu Reeves likeness
Is it still treat-brained if someone wants to be a necromancer so they can resurrect Thatcher, Reagan, and Gorby to make their skeletons fight in a protracted zombie war against the state? Asking for a friend…
“You’re afraid of necromancy? Don’t you know that Necromancy creates jobs?” - Byron BuyYourBones, CEO of ARISEN a silicon valley start up that uses AI and Machine Learning to create digital avatars of your loved ones and then forces them to work as jobs as on-demand Chatbots for MEGACORP customer services
EDIT: I should have called it AI-RISEN, the marketing suits would never have the courage to call it something that doesn’t overtly name check whatever trendy tech is poppin’.
The most bazinga brained person I know was mad about people discussing the ethics of cgi necromancy not because of a principled stance but that it ruined the movie by giving away the big reveal of Peter Cushing being in it.
