Val Kilmer dubbed ‘worst human being’ by director 1 year after actor’s passing: I’ll ‘speak ill of the dead’

Adam Marcus claimed Val Kilmer was the “worst human being” more than a year after the actor died from pneumonia.

The director, who worked with the late Batman Forever star in the 2008 action thriller Conspiracy, took to Threads over the weekend in a now-deleted post to call out Kilmer.

“#MicroIntellectMonday to that time when I directed that guy. The guy who played Iceman and Doc Holiday [sic]. You know the one,” he wrote alongside a photo of himself and Kilmer, per Entertainment Weekly.

“Here’s me and the Putz working it out on the set of Conspiracy,” Marcus, 58, added.

The filmmaker then addressed fans who were upset at his negative comments about the late Top Gun star.

“And to any of you rolling your eyes because of the whole ‘don’t speak ill of the dead bullh**’, f**k that,” he reportedly wrote and later deleted, reports Page Six.

Marcus added that if Kilmer “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,” he concluded.

Kilmer played William “Spooky” MacPherson, a disabled special operations Marine wounded during combat operations in Iraq, in Marcus’ film.

When MacPherson visited a friend in the Southwestern United States, he discovered that his pal had disappeared, and no one would acknowledge that the person ever lived there.

Kilmer was previously labelled as difficult to work with in movies.

In a 1996 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher said Kilmer was “childish and impossible” and a “psychologically disturbed human being.”

The Island of Dr. Moreau director, John Frankenheimer, vowed never to work with Kilmer again after the 1996 horror film.

In a 2021 documentary about Kilmer’s life, the actor addressed the claims about his on-set behaviour.

“I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some,” he said. “I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed. And I am blessed.”

Kilmer died at his home in Los Angeles in April 2025 from pneumonia. He was 65.

The Tombstone star was reportedly bedridden years before his passing, due to a lack of energy from his past cancer treatment.

This article originally appeared in Page Six and was reproduced with permission.