We've seen Fred Astaire dance with a vacuum cleaner and Forrest Gump shake hands with John F. Kennedy, and have known for a long time that it's possible to bring back old footage of actors and repurpose them in new ways. But who better than George Lucas to take it a step further, buy up all the old film rights to deceased movie stars and bring them back in computer form?
It's a wild idea that only Lucas would probably be crazy enough to try, but before you get to worked up know this story is coming from Mel Smith, an actor and director who made The Radioland Murders in 1994 under Lucas's tutelage. Talking to The Daily Mail Smith made it clear he's no fan of Lucas and his technology obsessions-- "George is obsessed with [CGI] and used too much in the last two Star Wars films-- which I thought were ghastly." As if to further prove his point, Smith dropped the following bomb:
"He’s been buying up the film rights to dead movie stars in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together in a movie, so you’d have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck appear alongside today’s stars."
There's a lot of questions to be asked here, first among them how Smith-- an avowed enemy of Lucas's, apparently-- would know this when nobody else does. It seems far more likely that this is a rumor floating around that Smith is happy to repeat, without any insider knowledge on whether or not it's happening. I'm going with that explanation for now, if only to maintain the illusion that Lucas has even a shred of sanity left.
