James Earl Jones sadly passed away this week at 93, leaving an amazing legacy as an actor. His iconic voice lent gravitas to the CNN tag, Mufasa in The Lion King, and, most famously, Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise. But, thanks to some foresight by Jones and Star Wars owner Disney, his voice could very well return in future projects performing all-new lines.
Though Jones is credited with Darth Vader’s voice from the original Star Wars in 1977 until now, his interest in stepping back from working led to some AI assistance in his most recent Vader performance in the Obi-Wan Kenobi television series. Disney unsurprisingly wanted to make sure Darth Vader sounded like Jones in the show. So, the company worked with Jones and Ukrainian AI voice company Respeecher to turn samples of Jones’ past performances into a voice clone that could recreate how he sounded but read from a new script. It’s similar to how Respeecher replicated the voice of video game actor Miłogost Reczek for Cyberpunk 2077.
