Amazon-backed AI platform Showrunner plans to use generative tools to reconstruct 43 minutes of excised footage from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, intensifying Hollywood’s debate over artificial intelligence. CEO Edward Saatchi called the film a “ruined masterpiece,” framing the effort as an academic, noncommercial project because rights to the RKO library sit with Warner Bros. Discovery. Welles’ estate condemned the move, saying it had not been consulted and arguing AI cannot replicate the director’s innovation. The initiative, undertaken with filmmaker Brian Rose, arrives as studios and creators wrestle with AI’s role in production and restoration, echoing recent controversy over an AI-enhanced Wizard of Oz presentation at Las Vegas’ Sphere. Welles lost control of Ambersons in 1942 when RKO cut the film to 88 minutes; the original 132-minute version has long been a cinephile “holy grail.”
Related articles:
— The Magnificent Ambersons
— Orson Welles
— The Other Side of the Wind
— Generative artificial intelligence
— RKO Pictures
