AI Firm Plans Reconstruct Lost 43 Minutes Orson Welles Film

Showrunner, an AI-driven film company led by Edward Saatchi, has announced an ambitious project to reconstruct the missing 43 minutes of Orson Welles' 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons, which was cut and destroyed by RKO Studios following negative test screenings. The project, employing Showrunner's new FILM-1 AI model, is a tribute to Welles, whom Saatchi calls "the greatest storyteller of the last 200 years," and aims to demonstrate AI's positive potential in storytelling despite skepticism in the film industry. Showrunner is collaborating with filmmaker Brian Rose, who has spent years reconstructing the lost scenes using notes, photographs, and production records, alongside VFX expert Tom Clive. This effort follows decades of attempts by archivists and cinephiles to recover or restore the excised footage, including a fruitless search in Brazil where Welles had been working at the time. The project will not be commercialized due to rights restrictions, but it seeks to provide a vision of what the original film might have been like, highlighting the historical significance of Welles' work and the potential for AI to contribute to cinematic restoration. As the first live-action exploration for Showrunner beyond its animated beginnings, this initiative signals a new chapter in AI-assisted filmmaking amid ongoing debates about AI's role in Hollywood.