By Brent Lang, Jazz Tangcay
Five years prior to his death in 2025, Val Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, in “As Deep as the Grave.” But Kilmer, who was battling throat cancer, was too sick to ever make it to set.
“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” says the film’s writer and director Coerte Voorhees. “It was very much designed around him. It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest. I was looking at a call sheet the other day, and we had him ready to shoot. He was just going through a really, really tough time medically, and he couldn’t do it.”
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