Director slams backlash after calling Val Kilmer the 'worst human being I've ever known'

Director Adam Marcus has doubled down on his comments about the late Top Gun actor, Val Kilmer, where he called him ‘the worst human’ he’d ‘ever known’.

Marcus, 58, worked with Kilmer as the director on their 2008 action thriller film, Conspiracy, which saw Kilmer play the character of William 'Spooky' MacPherson, a disabled Iraq War veteran.

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Kilmer’s career was littered with great movies until he died of pneumonia at the age of 65 on April 1 2025. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and while he later recovered, the treatment severely damaged his vocal cords.

While many mourned the loss to the entertainment industry, it seemed not everyone had great memories of the actor – with Marcus being one of them.

Adam Marcus worked with Val Kilmer on Conspiracy in 2008 (Facebook)

Per Entertainment Weekly, Marcus took to Threads to share an image of the pair on the set of their film together, alleging that his time with the ‘Putz’, wasn’t a good one.

Calling Kilmer the ‘worst human being I’ve ever known’, the director has since come under fire for his post.

However, he’s hitting back against the naysayers.

In a comment to UNILAD, the director alleged he ‘confonted’ Kilmer several times about his alleged behavior, claiming he had ‘never had any other experience with anyone like I had with Mr. Kilmer’.

Though Marcus noted there are ‘always creative squabbles that occur when you’re making a movie’, he claimed his time with Kilmer was far beyond that.

The director explained that since coming out to talk about it – which he shared he has been doing for years – he's even had death threats from disgruntled readers.

However, Marcus said he still stands by what he posted and that he had been saying these things for ‘19 years’ but that ‘no one listened’.

He told us: “I have been speaking about this for 19 years since we made the film. There was no ME TOO back then and so no one listened. I posted a tiny post on my personal Facebook page for my fans, a post I have put up many times over the years, and it was shared to my Threads account that I never use.”

Explaining he had ‘NO IDEA the post had been shared’ to Threads (which can happen when Meta accounts are linked up), Marcus said he ended up facing ‘backlash’.

“Of course there has been backlash. There’s always backlash. And I respect anyone whose feeling were hurt by my words. For that, I am very sorry. But the irony of being bullied for calling out a bully is incredible,” he said, adding: “We live in a day and age when everyone is so angry at the world, that any chance to focus that anger on someone you disagree with feels satisfying in some awful way.”

He said he stands by what he said of the late actor (Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage)

Marcus continued: “I’ve been told to kill myself. There have been personal attacks that have included hate speech. And all of this is okay, because I said that Val was the ‘worst human being I’d ever known?’ That’s it. That’s what I said. That’s my truth. That’s my experience.

“It is also the experience of a great many people in my industry that had worked with Mr. Kilmer. And they have spoken about it in public as well. It’s what happened. I stood up then and I’ll stay standing.”

Indeed, he isn’t the first director to have taken issue with Kilmer's alleged antics, as Joel Schumacher of 1995's Batman Forever called him ‘childish and impossible’ and a ‘psychologically disturbed human being’.

John Frankenheimer, who directed 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau in which Kilmer played Dr. Montgomery, also said he’d never work with the star again.

As for Kilmer’s recollection of his own past behavior, he touched upon some regrets in the 2021 documentary about his life, titled Val.

He said: “I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. 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.”