The neural network will play the role of Vladimir Vysotsky in the movie

The new film about Vladimir Vysotsky "Volodya" will use deepfake technology - to achieve maximum similarity, Vysotsky's face will be superimposed on the face of actor Alexander Shpagin. Director and producer of the film Alexander Zhigalkin spoke about this at a meeting with the Cinema Fund. The film is being created with the support of Channel One, the release date has not yet been announced by the producers.

Nikita Vysotsky takes part in the work, who will voice his father. According to the plot, the film begins with the release of the film "Vertical" on the screens of the cinemas of the Soviet Union. Viewers are also promised to be shown the three main love stories of Vladimir Vysotsky.

The director and producer of the film "Volodya" Alexander Zhigalkin spoke about the expectations from the project and the leading actor:

“This is a feature film, in which for the first time in the history of cinema a real historical character with 100% identity will be recreated using a neural network. […] We have an actor Alexander Shpagin, he is a godsend for our history. This is a person who has existed in this image for many years. The manner of speaking, walking, playing the guitar and so on are very identical with additional work. […] Vysotsky will sing, and he will speak in the voice of Nikita, with whom we initially came up with the whole thing together.

The team of the Sber AI laboratory for artificial intelligence is working on the face transfer technology. According to Andrei Kuznetsov, head of research at this company, experts use proprietary technologies and developments that are needed to improve the quality of face transfer.

Vladimir Vysotsky is a Soviet poet, theater and film actor, songwriter, writer and screenwriter. According to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center in 2018, Vysotsky ranks second among Russian idols of the 20th century. In the first place - naut Yuri Gagarin. Several feature films and documentaries have been shot about Vladimir Vysotsky, for example, “Vysotsky. Thank you for being alive”, “Hamlet without Hamlet”, “Alive Vysotsky” and others.