This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.



Death is no excuse for celebrities to stop working. James Dean, despite being dead since 1955, has recently been cast in a new Vietnam war movie, Finding Jack. His co-starring role will be computer generated from old footage and photographs and voiced by another actor. The dead are now rivals with the living for parts in movies.

This controversial casting decision has been met with outrage by many actors on Twitter. Complaints have circulated about puppeteering as well as being disrespectful to the dead movie idol.

Dean is by no means the first dead celebrity to continue to perform after death. Nat King Cole sang with his daughter Natalie on her 1991 Grammy Award-winning album, Unforgettable … With Love, and performed on stage with her via a video screen.

Meanwhile, Tupac Shakur sang on stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre in 2012 and Michael Jackson performed as a hologram at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014.

If, as Dean stated: “Immortality is the only true success,” then success is achievable for a growing number of high-profile dead celebrities who have remained productive and valuable after death.

But some dead celebrities are more valuable than others.