Just days after Hollywood patted itself on the back at last week’s Academy Awards, the movie industry got a kick in the teeth from an unlikely source — an actor who’s been dead for nearly a year.

“Top Gun” and “Batman Forever” star Val Kilmer died in April after a decade-long battle with throat cancer, but a controversial moviemaker wants to bring him back to life.

“As Deep as the Grave” director Coerte Voorhees told Variety that despite all the talented, living, breathing, hungry, struggling actors on the planet who would jump at the chance to star in a motion picture, he was casting a screen star who has been dead for almost a year.

“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” said Voorhees, who wrote and directed the film about Southwestern archaeologists who trace the history of the Navajo people.

Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist.

“It was very much........

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