George Lucas Planning To Resuscitate Dead Actors For Future Films?

George Lucas wants to round up a bunch of dead actors and resurrect them onscreen, says comedy veteran Mel Smith, who directed the 1994 Lucasfilm Radioland Murders.

"George is obsessed with [CGI] [...] He's been buying up the film rights to dead movie stars in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together in a movie, so you'd have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck appear alongside today's stars," Smith told Britain's Daily Mail during a recent interview.

Given Lucas's penchant for over-the-top computer effects, Smith's statement seems plausible.

However, Spout points out that Lucas was singing a very different tune in 2002, when he told the BBC, "A computer can duplicate Tom Hanks, for example, and we already use that technology a little for stunts and difficult scenes. But if you bring back Marilyn Monroe, what you would have is a caricature."

A spokesperson for Lucasfilm told OnTheRedCarpet.com that the rumor is "false," though Lucas himself has not come forward on the issue.

For now, it looks like Star Wars in 3D is the craziest thing we can expect from George Lucas for a while.

[h/t The Sun via NBC Bay Area]