Incredible: Digital De-Aging Technology Has Allowed James Woods to Play the Baby in "Look Who’s Talking 4"

AI once again expands what's possible

James Woods before (left) and after (right) digital de-aging. (Photos from Barry King via Getty and Ahha Xoba)

Digital de-aging technology has changed what’s possible in movie-making. The technology first gained attention when it allowed Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci to play the same characters over decades in The Irishman. Now, it’s being used with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the new film Here. But the technology’s most astonishing feat is still to come: Next month, Tristar Pictures will release Look Who’s Talking 4, in which 77 year-old James Woods has been digitally de-aged 76 years to play the lead role.

I Might Be Wrong has been given an advance copy of the film, and it’s incredible. To our eyes, you’d never know that the chubby li’l butterball on the screen is actually the 50-year film veteran known for Salvador and Ghosts of Mississippi. Woods, naturally, brings his trademark intensity to the role: There’s a scene in which his character — known only as “Davy” — pours a bowl of Froot Loops over his head and says “whuh oh!” that chilled us to the bone. Woods inhabits Davy so convincingly that it seems inconceivable that the role almost went to Anthony Hopkins.

The de-aging technology is flawless, but bringing Davy to the silver screen was a technical challenge. “I had to learn to move like a baby,” Woods told IMBW. “I worked with a movement coach for two years to perfect Davy’s toddle, and it took another two years to capture his hand movements — if I had, say, grabbed a sippy cup using adult fine motor skills, it would have looked wrong.” The challenges of the role became clear when a single shot of Davy pulling a cat’s tail took nearly three weeks to capture. “It just didn’t look right,” Woods said, “If we had said ‘good enough’ and moved on, it would have taken the audience right out of the film. But I finally got Davy’s clumsy grasp right, and Andy Serkis totally nailed the cat’s reaction, so it was all worth it.”

Some technical challenges had to be addressed on the fly. “The original plan was to have Jimmy speak without moving his lips, like a ventriloquist,” director Martin Scorsese told IMBW. “Because if you watch the original films, the baby’s mouth doesn’t move — it’s an inner monologue. And we wanted to be true to that vision. But that was a challenge, because — though Jimmy got very good at throwing his voice — lines like and ‘likely story, Dada’ and ‘uh oh — big boom boom!’ were still tough. So, we ended up just dubbing in the voice later.”

The production faced other challenges. Bruce Willis, who voiced the baby’s thoughts in the original film, chose not to participate, saying that the script “lacked the pathos and societal commentary that characterized the original film.” There were also rumors of on-set tension between Woods and Barbra Streisand, who played Davy’s playmate Rosie. But Scorsese downplayed those reports: “There’s always tension when highly creative people are passionate about a project,” he said. “But I’m proud of our cast. Jimmy and Babs were fantastic, I’m thrilled that John Travolta came back to play Davy’s rival Aiden, and we have a star turn from a newcomer: Two year-old Emma Lozano, who plays Grandma.”

Above: Woods (left) and Lozano (right) film a scene. (Photo from FatCamera via Getty)

Though the extensive technical effects caused the film’s budget to balloon to more than $250 million, Tristar’s executives are bullish about the film’s prospects. “As long as we outperform Captain America and the live-action Snow White in our opening weekend, we should be fine,” one executive said. And there are plans for even more ambitious use of de-aging technology: Morgan Freeman, Michael Kane, and Rita Moreno are currently filming the next installment in the Ocean's Eleven, series — Toddler’s Eleven — due out this fall. Macaulay Culkin will play Kevin McCallister over a 110 year span in 20th Century Fox’s Home Alone: Generations. And Ben Kingsley has signed on to play every role in an upcoming reboot of The Little Rascals.

Not everyone is thrilled about the new technology: The Screen Actors Guild reports numerous complaints from its infant members about the loss of jobs. “They are super fussy about it — absolute tantrum time,” one source said. But — for now, at least — digital de-aging appears to be here to stay. And if it enables more cinematic triumphs like an infantilized James Woods running nude through his mother’s dinner party yelling “Yay, bath time!” while AI renders his baby buttocks with flawless precision, then I Might Be Wrong is excited about the future.

For the lawyers: This is a bit, none of it is real. Even though I don’t even know what you might get me on here — I never said the movie was bad, so it’s not defamation. But sometimes lawyers get bored.

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