Hello internet, welcome to film theory, where we encourage you to slap that subscribe button harder than you wouldn't award show host making ball jokes.

So a couple weeks ago, we started examining Disney's use of deep fake and digital de-aging technology in the wake of young Luke appearing all over the Book of Boba Fed.

During that discussion, we briefly touched on the fact that more and more studios seem to be bringing characters played by actors who've died back into their films played by the actors who've already died ranging from paul walker and fast and furious thought you could leave without saying goodbye to carry fisher and star wars and harold ramus and ghostbusters

i thought you might turner but of them one stood out from the others a digital digital Peter Cushing played Granmoth Tarkin in 2016's Rogue One.

You see, Peter Cushing died back in 1994, so his appearance in Rogue One wasn't like some sort of respectful send-off to a recently departed actor.

Plus, they've gotten other actors to play Tarkin in the past, like in Revenge of the Sith. Even the body double they got to perform the character in Rogue One looks enough like Tarkin that they didn't need to go all digital necromancer for the scene. See, something about this got my fierce senses tingling. Disney doesn't usually do something unless there's a business advantage in doing it. And this seemed like more than just a PR move, so I started digging. And from what I found, I think

Disney is playing a long game when it comes to deceased actors. By seeding the idea of reviving

characters now, they stand to earn some big money in the ownership and employment of dead actors

decades from now. Let me explain. You see, indie studio Magic City films made headlines back in

2019 when they

announced that they were working on an adaptation of the novel Finding Jack. The story of a

Vietnam vet finding his will to live after rescuing a wounded dog. The story itself

wasn't the thing that made headlines, obviously. Instead, it was who was cast as the leading

man, James Dean. Now, if you don't know who James Dean is, I can't really

blame you at this point. Dean was a Hollywood heartthrob most known for his role in

Rebel Without a Cause. But his rise to stardom was cut tragically short in

195 when he died in a car crash at the age of 24. And now you start to see why

this movie caught people's attention. He died nearly 70 years ago,

and yet he's about to star in a brand new movie.

See, the filmmakers plan to revive Dean using the same mixture of CGI,

body double, and face swapping that we've seen used to create Tarkin and Rogue One

and young Luke in the Mandalorian.

...