Credit: Adam Marcus / Georges Biard
Mon 1 June 2026 17:35, UK
Adam Marcus, the director of the film Conspiracy, has claimed that the movie’s star, Val Kilmer, was the “worst human being I’ve ever known”.
The 2008 film, which followed Kilmer playing a disabled war veteran injured in Iraq, who returns to the south-west of the US to discover that one of his friends has gone missing, also starred Jennifer Esposito and Gary Cole.
The movie may have been forgotten by many as it was overwhelmingly panned by critics upon its release, but Marcus has now shed more light on the experience by painting a rather negative picture of what it was like to work with Kilmer.
Posting to Threads on June 1st, the director shared a picture of himself and Kilmer on the set of the film before referring to the actor as “The guy who played Iceman and Doc Holiday. You know the one. Here’s me and the Putz working it out on the set of Conspiracy. So yeah, that happened.”
Kilmer passed away aged 65 last April, but despite this, Marcus continued: “And to any of you rolling your eyes because of the whole ‘don’t speak ill of the dead bullshit’, fuck that.”
He added: “[If] this guy did one-tenth of what he did on my set today, he would have been cancelled in a blink. Worst human being I’ve ever known… and that is really saying something.”
To a certain extent this is hardly surprising, given that Kilmer had a notorious reputation in Hollywood of often being difficult to work with, most infamously running into fights with his co-stars Marlon Brando on The Island of Dr Moreau and Tom Sizemore on Red Planet and Heat.
It is not known what specific incidents Marcus could be referring to that allegedly took place on the set of Conspiracy.
However, perhaps unfortunately for the director, Kilmer is set to be resurrected in AI form to star in the film As Deep as the Grave, which he signed on to appear in prior to his passing.
Despite the controversy of the use of AI in the industry, the move is being supported by Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes, who said: “If we’re going to have [AI], we can make things that expand the possibilities of what we can do as humans, not to replace them.”
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