AI-Powered Restoration of Orson Welles’ Lost Masterpiece

September 6, 2025

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Orson Welles is one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. After directing several high-profile stage productions and hosting his radio anthology series, Welles’ first film was Citizen Kane (1941) – which he co-wrote, directed, and starred as the titular character Charles Foster Kane – and is now widely regarded as one of the best movies of all time.

Throughout his career, Welles directed twelve additional feature films, including highly celebrated works such as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Othello (1951), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), and Chimes at Midnight (1966). Despite his towering achievements and influence, Welles was an outsider to Hollywood’s studio system at the time, and often found himself fighting with studios for creative control.

The Magnificent Ambersons Set For Restoration Using AI

The Magnificent Ambersons is set for a new restoration using artificial intelligence. Written and directed by Orson Welles, the 1942 film follows the pampered heir of the declining Amberson wealth who drives a wedge between his widowed mother and the man she has long cherished. Its cast includes Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, and Ray Collins, with Welles narrating.

During editing, Welles lost creative control to RKO Studios, who changed the film significantly, including altering the ending to be more optimistic. While Welles’ original notes still exist, about an hour of footage was permanently destroyed and never found. Despite being released in a heavily altered form, The Magnificent Ambersons is still widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Showrunner will reconstruct the missing footage from The Magnificent Ambersons using artificial intelligence. The Amazon-backed company recently unveiled a new AI model capable of producing long and complex narratives, eventually extending to live-action feature-length films. The service already enables users to create custom TV episodes from just a short prompt.

Since Showrunner does not hold the rights to the film, the project will not be commercialized. They plan to combine AI with traditional filmmaking methods to re-create the lost footage, including filming certain sequences with live performers, then applying AI-driven face transfer to replicate the appearance of the original cast. The team will also rely heavily on the film’s extensive archive of set photos to guide the reconstruction.

Our Take On The Magnificent Ambersons Being Restored Using AI

While AI’s further encroachment into Hollywood is troubling, signaling a slippery slope toward automated content creation, this specific project appears to preserve the human touch. Leading the project is filmmaker Brian Rose, who has dedicated the past five years to reconstructing 30,000 lost frames from the film, recreating the physical sets as 3D models to accurately map camera movements in line with the script and archival photos.

Rose has also restored the framing and timing of each scene, forming the backbone of the re-creation. Assisting him is Tom Clive, a VFX specialist skilled in face-swapping and de-aging techniques. This effort to restore The Magnificent Ambersons appears to be using AI as a creative tool to enhance human artistry, rather than replace it.