Hollywood is buzzing that superstars are having their likenesses scanned so they can license their digital doppelgängers to play roles in absentia. By sitting still for a mere 17 seconds, with a cyberscanner orbiting 360 degrees, an actor's features can be translated into 3-D data. And voila! A synthespian is born.
Marlon Brando is leading the revolution. And some of Tinseltown's biggest players, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Carrey, are making the trek to Cyberware, a Monterey, California-based shop, to be scanned for specific projects. Cyberware president David Addleman is hopeful that all stars will eventually stockpile their data, like the suspended bodies in Coma, just waiting for the day when technology will resurrect them for as yet undreamed-of projects.
But so far, the Coma scenario hasn't translated into big bucks. "I haven't seen anybody archiving themselves for the future," Addleman sighs.
Contemplating the market's apathy, Mark Dippe, the director of Spawn, whose superhero is the closest thing yet to a digital human, suggests that re-creating actors "isn't feasible yet on photorealistic and economic lines."
For those who have taken the cyberscan plunge, the issue is where their data is stored, who has access to it, and who ultimately owns it. Cyberware keeps copies of every scan, as does every purchaser, so who really is the proprietor? "That's kind of hard to say," admits Dick Cavdek, president of Cyber F/X, a digital-scanning company using Cyberware machines. "If a studio pays us for a scan, we assume that any release of data has to be authorized by them."
While the cyberscanners insist none of this data is free-floating, it's conceivable that someone might one day be trading Carrey's likeness for Harrison Ford's on a black market.
If actors aren't yet heading en masse to cyberscan boutiques, they may soon be. This year, the late George Burns will star in an Oh, God! sequel, via computer graphics. Should Burns make a splash, the rush to digital doubles could be on.
Meanwhile, Cavdek insists the technology " is a great, cheap insurance policy for the studios, should the actor die before filming ends – like what happened with Brandon Lee in The Crow." If anyone's interested, Cavdek's looking for financing.
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