Grimes and Val Kilmer Appear in AI-Generated Feature *Gods Don't Give Gifts*
Pop musician Grimes will appear in Gods Don't Give Gifts, an AI-generated science-fiction film, lending both her likeness and her vocal performance to the production, according to The Verge. The film is scheduled for release on December 4, 2026.
The film is being produced by Fable, an AI studio, and is directed by Jack London, who is known online as Gossip Goblin. The production is billed as "the first AI film to come to theatres." Grimes's contribution is described as an AI-generated cameo. People reported in March that the film also features Val Kilmer, who appears through AI technology nearly one year after his death. A trailer has been released.
Credits shared by Gossip Goblin in early October put the core team at nine creatives, with two writers, four composers, eleven voice actors and a five-person post-production team. Post-production covers editing, sound and visual finishing after filming. The count is small for a feature with a theatrical release, and it reflects how generative tools, which produce images, video or audio from a text prompt, are being used to cover roles that a conventional production would staff with much larger departments.
Distribution plans are still taking shape. The makers are teaming up with AGC to bring the film to screens worldwide, according to a late-October Instagram post. A Yahoo report from November 3 says the team is planning a Times Square marketing push and Oscar screenings. These are plans, and no dates for either have been announced.
In my view, the Kilmer and Grimes appearances raise a question that matters more than the release date. Both involve a real person's voice and image being generated for a screen performance. Consent, estate permission and compensation for the performer's likeness are terms the industry will need to pin down, and a theatrical release puts those arrangements in front of audiences and guild negotiators in a way a web clip does not.
The broader context here is that the film is testing a production model rather than a novelty. A small creative group, working with generative video, synthetic voice (speech created by a model rather than recorded from a person) and AI-assisted post-production, is aiming for the same worldwide theatrical distribution that has historically required large studio machinery. Whether that model holds up at scale is an open question, and the answer will depend on audience reception as much as on the technology.
I remain optimistic about what tools of this kind make possible for small teams with a strong story. The same tools also lower the bar for producing convincing imitations of living and dead performers, and the conversation about where that line sits belongs to the people who work in the field, alongside the audiences who will decide whether these films find a place in theatres.
