Reminds of "The Congress" by Ari Folman. "Robin Wright is an aging actress with a reputation for being fickle and unreliable, so much so that nobody is willing to offer her roles. [...] Robin agrees to sell the film rights to her digital image to Miramount Studios in exchange for a hefty sum of money and the promise to never act again. After her body is digitally scanned, the studio will be able to make films starring her, using only computer-generated characters."
"When Nicola Anders, the star of out-of-favor director Viktor Taransky's new film, refuses to finish it, Taransky is forced to find a replacement. Contractual requirements totally prevent using her image in the film, so he must re-shoot. Instead, Viktor experiments with a new computer program he inherits from late acquaintance Hank Aleno which allows creation of a computer-generated woman which he can easily animate to play the film's central character. Viktor names his virtual actor "Simone", a name derived from the computer program's title, Simulation One."
"The late Fred Astaire 'dances with' a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner. This controversial ad, okayed by Astaire's daughter but protested by his widow, inspired "the Astaire Bill," which was passed in 1999 to 'eliminate the exceptions and place the burden of proof on those using celebrity images, forcing them to show that their use is protected by the First Amendment.'"
I remember that commercial, and Audrey Hepburn's chocolate commercial. And Bill Clinton's role in Contact.
More recently there was also some news about actors having to double check their contracts to make sure they didn't sign away the rights to 3D scans of them being used outside of the film they were in.
> More recently there was also some news about actors having to double check their contracts to make sure they didn't sign away the rights to 3D scans of them being used outside of the film they were in.
Yikes! An actor works once and would never work again.
If that sort of thing becomes commonplace, that won't be an issue, because they'll never work at all, and actor will slowly but surely cease to exist as a profession at the high end. See the comments upthread about Hatsune Miku and such; Japan is much farther down this road than the US is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)