Slightly less mad about the ‘Magnificent Ambersons’ AI project

A startup announced plans last fall to recreate lost footage from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons using generative AI, a move that initially seemed certain to rile cinephiles and offer little commercial return. Michael Schulman’s New Yorker profile helps explain the motivation: Fable founder Edward Saatchi grew up watching films in a private screening room and says he first saw Ambersons when he was twelve, driven by a genuine love of Welles’ work.

The film’s missing footage remains tantalizing: Welles called Ambersons a “much better picture” than Citizen Kane, but a disastrous preview led the studio to cut 43 minutes, tack on a contrived happy ending and destroy the excised footage. Saatchi called the material “the holy grail of lost cinema” and has pursued ways to undo what happened.

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