An AI company is to reconstruct the missing portions of Orson Welles’ legendary mutilated masterwork The Magnificent Ambersons, it has been announced.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Showrunner platform is planning to use its AI tools to assist in a recreation of the lost 43 minutes of Welles’ 1942 film, removed and subsequently destroyed by Hollywood studio RKO.
Edward Saatchi, CEO of interactive AI film-making studio Fable, which operates Showrunner, said in a statement to IndieWire: “We’re starting with Orson Welles because he is the greatest storyteller of the last 200 years … So many people are rightly skeptical of AI’s impact on cinema – but we hope that this gives people a sense of a positive contribution that AI can make for storytelling.”
Reports suggest that Showrunner is partnering with film-maker Brian Rose, who has been working since 2019 on an attempt to reconstruct the missing portions using animated sequences, as well as VFX expert Tom Clive.
Welles started production in 1942 on The Magnificent Ambersons, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s celebrated novel about a midwestern family in decline, as a follow-up to his Oscar-winning debut Citizen Kane. Welles had previously adapted the novel in 1939 as a radio drama.
But some footage of the finished film was removed after it tested poorly with audiences before its release, with Welles giving up final-cut rights as a result of negotiations with the studio. Welles also travelled to Brazil during the film’s editing process to start work on the unfinished production It’s All True, later saying RKO “absolutely betrayed me” by re-editing The Magnificent Ambersons’ final section and shooting a new ending. The master negatives of the removed footage were later destroyed to free up storage space.
A number of attempts have been made to restore or reconstruct the film. A working print was sent to Welles in Brazil but is presumed lost, with film-maker Joshua Grossberg leading a search to try to locate it. In 2005 a reconstruction using still photographs premiered at the Locarno film festival.
However, Saatchi told the Hollywood Reporter that Showrunner does not hold any rights to The Magnificent Ambersons, so any resulting footage is unlikely to be seen outside scholarly or demonstration contexts. “The goal isn’t to commercialise 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?’”
