Star Wars actor James Earl Jones reportedly considering retiring from role

James Earl Jones, who has previously voiced Darth Vader for nearly 50 years of Star Wars films, seems to be stepping away from the role.

According to Vanity Fair, the 91-year-old actor has signed off on archival voice recordings that are being used by young filmmakers who plan to use artificial intelligence synthetic speech technology to recreate Jones younger voice from his previous films for future Lucasfilm projects.

Matthew Wood, a Lucasfilm veteran of 32 years, told the outlet that he was looking into winding down this particular character. The company has enlisted the help of Respeecher, a Ukrainian startup that uses AI technology to craft new conversations from revitalized old voice recordings. Respeecher's relationship with Lucasfilm began with the Disney series The Book of Boba Fett, for which they recreated the voice of the young Luke Skywalker. The two also teamed up for the voice performance of Darth Vader on the series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which debuted on Disney's streamer this summer.

Bogdan Belyaev, a 29-year-old speech artist, was tasked with delivering the new recordings to Lucasfilm, but tragedy struck on February 24 when Russia invaded the country. As the air raid sirens powered through the city of Lviv, Belyaev hurried to finish the project and send his work back to Skywalker Sound in Northern California.

If everything went bad, we would never make these conversions delivered to Skywalker Sound, he says.

After the debut of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jones family informed Wood that they were pleased with the result of the synthesis between the actor's voice and Respeecher's technical work. Jones is credited for directing the performance of Darth Vader in the Disney series, with Wood describing the actor as a benevolent godfather. Jones first voiced the famed film villain in the 1977 Star Wars, while David Prowse appeared in the notorious black mask on-screen. Jones has voiced the character on both the big and small screen until this point.