An AI-powered restoration project is underway to recreate the 43 minutes of missing scenes from The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles’s 1942 follow-up to Citizen Kane. The original footage was famously cut and destroyed by the studio, leaving a critical gap in cinema history—now targeted for revival via cutting-edge generative technology.
The initiative is led by Fable Studio through its Showrunner platform, backed by a major tech investor. It combines AI-generated imagery, live-action recreation, and historical references such as set photographs and storyboards. The creative team includes a filmmaker who has spent years reconstructing missing footage through meticulous frame-by-frame work, alongside a visual effects specialist.
Executed over a two-year timeline, the effort is explicitly non-commercial. The reconstructed footage is intended purely as a demonstration of AI’s potential to enrich storytelling and preserve cinematic legacy. With no distribution rights secured, the restored scenes are expected to remain accessible only for archival or academic purposes.
Fable’s founder emphasized the choice of Welles for this project, labeling him among the most compelling storytellers of the past century. Through this undertaking, the team hopes to showcase how AI can serve art by filling in lost fragments of cultural history without replacing the original creators.
