Darth Vader is voiced by actor James Earl Jones, but his signature tones will now be reproduced using artificial intelligence (AI) and archival recordings.
The actor who provided the voice of the Star Wars villain Darth Vader has signaled his intention to leave the role but has licensed his voice for use in future movies.
James Earl Jones provided the voice of Darth Vader for the first time in the original 1977 Star Wars film and reprised the role for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
However, Star Wars supervising sound editor Matthew Wood told Vanity Fair that the 91-year-old actor was “considering retiring this specific character.”
Jones went on to voice the character in films such as Rogue One, the first episode of the Star Wars anthology series, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the third installment in the sequel trilogy.
Future Disney and Lucasfilm movies will utilize artificial intelligence synthetic speech technologies to reproduce the younger version of Jones’ voice from his prior films.
Researcher, a Ukrainian voice cloning firm, will employ artificial intelligence to create new dialogues from revitalized old voice recordings.
For the recent Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, they restored his voice from the original Star Wars movie and used some of his archival voice recordings.
Wood stated that Jones’s family was quite pleased with the outcome, and he referred to Jones as a “benevolent godfather” for his advice on the actor’s performance during filming.
The Ukrainian startup also collaborated with Lucasfilm to provide the voice of a young Luke Skywalker for The Book of Boba Fett, a Disney+ series.
Wood stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had affected the Kyiv-based team, but they had persevered to produce the programs.
Some of Jones’ most well-known lines from the beloved Star Wars saga are: “No, I am your father”; “You have no idea the strength of the dark side! “I am obligated to obey my lord” and “The force is strong with this one” “.
While Jones provided the voice for the character, the late actor David Prowse wore the classic Darth Vader costume consisting of a black mask, helmet, and floor-length cape.
Jones, a distinguished stage and screen actor with a six-decade career, voiced Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King and co-starred with Eddie Murphy as King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America, returning both roles in the remake and sequel, respectively.
