Actor James Dean has been cast in an upcoming war film, despite the fact that he’s, you know… been dead since 1955.
No, we haven’t entered The Twilight Zone, this is a real thing that’s happening.
Set to be released next year, Dean has been “posthumously cast” in a war drama titled Finding Jack, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Now, you’re probably wondering exactly how on earth this will work, which is understandable! Apparently, the film’s producers — Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh — are going to have a reanimated James Dean up and out of his grave by constructing his image with ‘full body’ CGI, based on real footage and images. From there, they’ll cast another (living) actor to voice him, which seems like a lot of extra work when you could just cast a living actor?
Now, it should be noted that this won’t be the first CGI-rendered performance by a late-actor.
Both Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing’s images have been posthumously recreated in order to complete their character arcs in Star Wars, but there’s something a little different, and ah… icky, about reanimating a long-dead actor to perform an entirely new role.
Ethical questions aside, Ernst, who will also direct this living nightmare, had this to say about their casting of Dean: “We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extreme complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean.”
The filmmakers rep, Mark Roesler, CEO of CMG Worldwide, added: “This opens up a whole new opportunity for many of our clients who are no longer with us.”
The film is about a soldier in the Vietnam war who loses his dog.