- The project will use archived set photos, new actors and AI deepfake technology to recreate the missing scenes.
- Showrunner cannot commercialize the reconstructed footage because it lacks rights from Warner Bros. Discovery and Concord.
- The effort is described by CEO Edward Saatchi as an academic project rather than a commercial release.
- Filmmaker Brian Rose will collaborate; he has previously led reconstruction attempts using archival records, voice actors and animation.
Showrunner, an AI storytelling company, plans to reconstruct 43 missing minutes of Orson Welles’s 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons using Artificial Intelligence and newly shot footage, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The company says the project will take about two years and will not be released commercially because it does not hold the film rights from Warner Bros. Discovery or Concord.
Edward Saatchi, CEO of Showrunner, called the work an academic effort and said the aim is to let the footage “exist in the world.” “The goal isn’t to commercialize the 43 minutes, but to see them exist in the world after 80 years of people asking ‘might this have been the best film ever made in its original form?”
The company will combine AI tools with conventional filmmaking, using archived set photos as scene references. Filmmaker Brian Rose — who has led reconstruction efforts at AmbersonProject and used archival records, voice actors and animation (wellesnet) — will collaborate on the project. Showrunner plans to shoot new live footage and apply AI deepfake technology to preserve the original cast likenesses. Deepfake refers to AI methods that create or alter video or audio to closely match a person’s appearance or voice.
The film’s original 131-minute cut was reduced by RKO Studios to 87 minutes with a new ending against Welles’ wishes. Welles said, “They destroyed ‘Ambersons’ and it destroyed me.” He also said, “My whole third act is lost because of all the hysterical tinkering that went on.” A rough cut sent to Welles in Brazil has been lost and is considered a cinephile “holy grail” (wellesnet).
Posthumous restorations of Welles’ work have precedent, including editor Walter Murch’s reconstructed version of “Touch of Evil” (jonathanrosenbaum.net) and Netflix’s restoration of “The Other Side of the Wind” (New Yorker). Welles’ voice has also been digitally recreated for the Storyrabbit app (Variety). Showrunner is backed by Amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-fund-venture-capital”>Amazon’s Alexa Fund and describes its platform as the “Netflix of AI,” with Saatchi calling generative content “a whole new artistic medium.”
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