Lucasfilm's subsidiary Industrial Lights and Magic is known for leading visual effects on actors's appearances to help make films that cannot be realized without such technology. For instance, Martin Scorsese entrusted them to "youthen" the leading actors in "The Irishman" so that Robert Deniro et al can play their characters at a younger age without wearing a red-ball "clown-nose" tracker. "Star Wars: Rouge One" practically reanimates Peter Cushing to continue and expand the involvement of Grand Moff Tarkin in the Star Wars saga. These processes are painstaking, and artists sweat over details on a frame-by-frame basis to negate the "uncanny valley" of artificial human likenesses.

Obviously, the labor-intensive nature of today's CGI techniques drive up production costs. Meanwhile, the deepfakes on YouTube provide a convincing enough rendition of likenesses without actual actors, all produced on consumer-level GPUs. This presents a huge potential to save costs and the benefits are clearly enticing to film productions.

As Hollywood gravitates towards blockbuster franchises, productions will want to bring the same ensemble of actors (or at least their likenesses) as long as possible. While moviegoers may be unsettled by seeing "reanimated" dead actors like in Rouge One, they still may hope to see franchise actors to look consistently youthful or attractive on screen. Deepfakes may be more relied upon to provide that effect.