James Earl Jones announces he’s retiring his iconic Darth Vader voice.
According to Vanity Fair, the 91-year-old actor signed over the rights to the famous Darth Vader voice. Jones gave the rights to filmmakers who plan on using a blend of recordings and A.I. technology to re-create Jones’ voice for upcoming Star Wars films.
A Ukrainian start-up, Respeecher, says they plan to “archival recordings and a proprietary AI algorithm to create new dialogue with the voices of performers from long ago.”
Lucasfilm also plans to “inform the actor about their plans for Vader and heed his advice on how to stay on the right course.”
Matthew Wood of Lucasfilm says Jones, who wished “to keep Vader alive,” mentioned taking a step back from the character.
“He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character,” Matthew told the magazine. “So how do we move forward?”
In the 1997’s Star Wars film “A New Hope,”Jones made his debut as Darth Vader. Most recently, Jones starred as the character for Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series. In fact, in that series, Jones’ worked as a re-created version of Vader’s voice. This was done with help of Respeecher.
