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INTEREST: Coachella Will Resurrect X Japan Members Hide & Taiji as Holograms

YOSHIKI is also returning to the stage less than a year after his emergency cervical artificial disc replacement surgery.

This sort of thing is EXACTLY why they've pushed likeness protection/identity trademarking HARD in the entertainment business in Hollywood.

Yes, it means some estates are going to stand to make BIG licensing money from whoever wants to license the likenesses of their client for digital recreation. You can bet the estates of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, and Elvis Presley are on top of this.

Of course, this has already been done to an extent -- usually with existing film clips instead of computer simulations.

The big entertainment companies got away with using the likenesses of past stars without paying anything to their families for decades. They did this FOR ANYTHING they wanted to including some things in very questionable taste. The families of the Three Stooges and the Universal Horror Monsters (Lugosi, Chaney, Karloff) eventually sued successfully to get control over that licensing.

[You could say the most successful vampire in the Lugosi family was Bela, Jr., after all. He was a lawyer -- a different type of bloodsucker! -- specializing in entertainment industry issues. He's the one who sued on behalf of the Universal Horror families. He was a bloodsucker but a bloodsucker in a good cause who was ahead of his time.]

More current celebrities have ALSO gotten control over their images -- Leonard Nimoy, for one, with anything that tied into Star Trek using the image of "Mr. Spock" and the late Robin Williams was reported to have a rider in his will that they COULD NOT try to digitally "bring him back to life" for at least 13 years after he died.

Why would Williams do this? Well, Disney ALREADY tried to screw him when they used his voice WITHOUT HIS AUTHORIZATION in advertising for Aladdin (1992) when they were trying sell Happy Meal tie-ins of all things to the movie! He didn't get paid for that. He didn't WANT his voice to be used in advertising for anything but the movie. They paid him a MINIMUM FEE/SCALE (not anything like $1million; Disney was big but not THAT BIG in the early 1990s when Aladdin was made) to do voiceover for that film, the MOST FAMOUS one he's tied to, and tried to take huge advantage of him. In the US alone, Aladdin made well over $150million. Probably twice or more of that worldwide AND with all the merchandizing. DOES ANYONE really believe that film would have been as popular without Williams' contribution? I'm a HUGE critic of Aladdin, I have problems with it galore, but I don't think it would have been as successful without Williams, too!

Trust me, there are a LOT SCARIER things corporations are trying to get away with nowadays but this is very basic. NOBODY should be using your image in any advertising or entertainment without paying you for it, period.