Recreation of Orson Welles’ Lost Magnificent Ambersons Footage with Artificial Intelligence
According to CinemaDrame News Agency, the missing portions of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons are being recreated using artificial intelligence. Edward Saatchi, with support from Amazon, is leading the project. However, the final result cannot be sold, as he has not purchased the rights from Warner Bros. Discovery.
In recent years, generative AI has been used mostly in post-production, particularly in visual effects, dubbing, and storyboarding, serving as a tool to reduce costs. Yet some filmmakers see the technology as a substitute for traditional filmmaking. Among them is Edward Saatchi, an Iraqi-born showrunner, who intends to recreate the 43 missing minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons.
Last Friday, the showrunner announced that a new AI model has been designed to generate long and complex narratives, enabling users to create live-action imagery for a television episode with just a few words. Over the next two years, this model will be used to recreate Welles’ Citizen Kane follow-up, parts of which were destroyed by studio executives.
Saatchi describes his platform as an “AI Netflix” and says: “With every passing year, the technology gets closer to producing full-length films with AI. Today, AI cannot sustain a story beyond a short episode… [but our company] is moving toward the frightening and strange future of generative storytelling.” He added that if “a commercial path outside an academic context emerges,” the rights to The Magnificent Ambersons might be purchased from Warner Bros.
The Magnificent Ambersons was filmed in 1941 at RKO Studios on Gower Street in Los Angeles. The initial cut ran 133 minutes, but the studio destroyed nearly one-third of the negatives without Welles’ consent. In July 1942, The Hollywood Reporter praised the 87-minute cut for its “magnificent artistic standards.”
Representatives of Welles’ estate issued a statement to Variety, saying they were unaware of these plans and that any commercial use would require proper licensing: “Overall, the estate has approved AI only for creating a voice model for dubbing purposes. However, using Welles’ artistic genius for promotional ends is disappointing, especially as we were not even informed. While AI is inevitable, it still cannot replace the artistic instincts of the human mind, which means such attempts to reconstruct Ambersons amount to mechanical persistence without any unique innovation or artistic force resembling Welles.”
