AI to recreate lost scenes from classic film 'The Magnificent Ambersons'
Showrunner, an Amazon-backed startup, is using generative AI to recreate 43 minutes of missing footage from Orson Welles's 1942 movie, The Magnificent Ambersons.
The original negatives were destroyed decades ago, but now Showrunner plans to blend AI-generated visuals, live actors with digitally altered faces, and old set photos to bring the lost scenes back to life.
Showrunner's vision for the future of film restoration
Over the next two years, Showrunner aims to automate film restoration with its FILM-1 model—an AI tool that can already make short story videos and is being trained for full-length films.
CEO Edward Saatchi calls it the "Netflix of AI," envisioning a platform that can create bespoke episodes of TV shows based on a few words of prompts.
Potential impact on movie restoration and remixing
This project shows how AI could change the way we restore and remix old movies—making it faster and more customizable.
It's a glimpse at how future filmmakers might preserve classics or even tweak stories and characters in ways that weren't possible before.