Synopsis for
S1m0ne (2002) More at IMDb Pro »

When the main star of disillusioned director Viktor Taransky's new movie walks away, Taransky is forced to find a replacement or never work again. Unfortunately for him, nobody wants to work with him any more.

Viktor tries a new computer program on a hard disk he inherited from his acquaintance Hank Aleno. Viktor uses the program as a last, desperate attempt to finish the film. The system allows him to use a computer-generated woman to play the movie's central character. Viktor names his synthetic actress "Simone", a name derived from the computer program's title, Simulation One. Seamlessly incorporated into the movie, Simone gives a fantastic performance. The studio, and soon the world, starts to ask "who is Simone?"

The movie is a great success, and Viktor markets her as a real person. He gives phone and camera interviews, but it becomes difficult to maintain. Two people doggedly pursue him and force him to showcase Simone "live" after they discover that he used stock photography as a background during the interview instead of being on that site as he claimed she was. Simone ascends to even greater heights, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.

After a while, Viktor decides to kill her off. He has her star a film of her own about zoophilia, hoping to disgust audiences. However, they continue to love her work. He then uses a computer virus to erase the program and dumps all of the DVDs and computer-related information into a trunk and throws it out to sea. During the funeral, policeman comes, opens the coffin where there is only Simone's poster. He is taken to the police station and is shown a security camera video where he is seen putting the trunk into the motor-boat (he had driven the boat to middle of the sea and only then thrown the trunk into the water). He is arrested for her murder. In his defence he admits that Simone was just a computer program, and that he put all the program discs in the chest and dropped it into the sea. Viktor's wife and daughter enter his studio, find the program, and realize that Viktor's actress is only a simulation (he forgot a virus floppy disk in the computer). They revive Simone and he is freed from custody. The film ends with Simone and Viktor holding an interview about their new "baby" before a post-credits sequence shows Viktor creating fake footage of Simone in a supermarket, which one of her pursuers sees, believing it real.