Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337
James Dean, who died in 1955, just landed a new movie role, thanks to CGI
James Dean is making his return to the big screen more than 60 years after dying in a car crash, thanks to two VFX companies.
Finding Jack is a movie set within the Vietnam-era that is "based on the existence and abandonment of more than 10,000 military dogs at the end of the Vietnam War," according to The Hollywood Reporter. Dean isn't the leading role, but his performance as "Rogan" is "considered a secondary lead role," according to the Reporter. Finding Jack marks the first movie that Dean will star in since Giant in 1956, just one year after his iconic role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause.
Magic City Films, the company producing the movie, obtained the rights to Dean's image from his family. The goal is to re-create "a realistic version of James Dean," the film's directors told the Reporter. To do so, they're working with Canadian VFX studio Imagine Engine and South African VFX company MOI Worldwide. Dean's body will be fully re-created using CGI technology, and another actor will voice his lines.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 11 2019, @06:28PM
Somewhat cynically, I suspect they're testing the water for movies with most- or all-synthetic casts; they start with a known person so as to give it the flavor of something with integral value in and of itself; they see how the public responds to the virtual person; and if that works out, they begin to move to synthetics (and away from paying actors.)
The advantages are clear, if they can pull it off: Not only do they save a popular actor's salary, but they can make the person as handsome, beautiful, evil, etc. as they choose.
They might have to start with people miving around with animation targets to be mapped-to-other later to get that "live" feel, but I don't think it'll be too far down the road before those motions will be amalgamated into detailed enough ML form to dispense with that as well.
CGI has come a long way, and I'm pretty sure that if they can use it to make their... craft... less expensive and more flexible, they will.
--
A day without pizza is like...
Just kidding. I have no idea.