At the 82nd Venice Film Festival, Edward Sace showrunner unveiled the most ambitious project ever. Using a new model suite called Film-1, the San Francisco startup attempts to replicate the missing 43-minute Orson Welles. The magnificent Amberson (1942) is a film widely considered a masterpiece of abandoned.
AI Final Scene Factory Expansion Keyframe Eugene Morgan Magnificent Ambersons
RKO
The project marks a new chapter in Showrunner, who experimented with a quick episode of Animated and began his life in Fable Studio, describing himself as “AI's Netflix.” Early demonstrations, including unauthorized episodes of South Park, attracted tens of millions of views and highlighted the disruptive potential of the generated video. Film-1 represents an effort to move beyond the satire of short animations to live-action style storytelling. Amberson As the first proof.
Wells' choice is intentional. After the victory of Citizen KaneWells returned with a drama from an era in which rog arrogance and industrial change brought back wealthy Midwest families. Studio, RKO, has discovered that the film is too dark. Executives cut more than 40 minutes, reconstructed the ending to be optimistic and destroyed the cut footage. “If I was allowed to finish The magnificent Amberson It would have been a bigger picture, as I intended KaneWells said later. Even in its truncated form, the film remains celebrated and appeared in the polls of critics of Sight & Sound, the greatest film of all time.
AI has reinforced keyframes for the final scene of the Board House.
RKO
The reconstruction efforts have long been captivating cinemas. Over the years, archivists and journalists have searched for missing reels in vain, even travelling to Brazil, where Wells worked at the time of the cut. For the Venice presentation, the showrunner partnered with researcher and filmmaker Brian Rose, a researcher and filmmaker who devoted five years to rebuilding the film from notebooks, set photos and production records. Rose recreated 30,000 frames, reconstructed the physical set in 3D, and mapped the camera movements to fit Wells' documents. Of the 73 scenes in the film, only 13 survived. “All of these changes were made without Wells' approval,” Rose said. “Several people who saw the original version of Wells believed it was the greatest film they've ever seen.”
Showrunner's task is to take the meticulous foundations of Rose and extend it with AI. According to the company, Film-1 generates keyframes, reconstructs the camera's trajectory, and uses surviving set photos to reconstruct lost space. Some sequences include live actors where AI face transfer and pose transfer techniques are used to approximate the original performance. The voice is produced in combination with the actors who provide live readings.
AI has reinforced keyframes for the final scene of Bording House Magnificent Ambersons.
RKO
The showrunner also announced that Tom Clive, a metaphysics VFX expert who was previously a Hollywood VFX startup, will be joining the company. Clive develops his own film projects as an AI filmmaker and contributes to the epic Amberson. Company metaphysics has previously worked on face swapping and evacuating movies like Robert Zemeckis here and Alien Romulus Matches the reconfiguration requirements.
Search argues that the project is non-commercial and academic and research exercises. The rights to the film are in Warner Bros. and Concord, which recently acquired RKO. The plan is to present a reconstruction in an academic and archive setting around 2027. “The goal is not to commercialize 43 minutes,” Saatchi said. “This is the IP of Warner Bros. and RKO. There is no goal to commercialize this. Our interest is purely academic and we will not release it outside of academic context. The goal is that there will be 80 years of people who will ask if this is the best film made in its original form over 80 years.”
This announcement comes as Hollywood discusses the role of AI in production. This is the subject that sparked labor and lawsuits. By choosing a film that is respected but cut off, Showrunner is trying to demonstrate the constructive use of the technology. Search put it together as follows: “People often ask when AI Citizen Kane will arrive. Perhaps AI Citizen Kane is not a new movie with a lot of VFX, but a painstaking reconstruction of the film's Holy Grail.”
Wells' own words echoed over decades. He called the lost final scene between Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead “the best scene I've ever filmed. The best scene of my life. And it's gone.” Because of AI, it's probably not the case.
