Hollywood, like many other industries, has been alarmed by the potential encroachment of A.I. Alongside such inanities as Tilly Norwood, an A.I.-generated “actress” who is supposedly seeking an agent, there have been major moves, like a recent licensing deal that could allow Disney’s intellectual property (everything from Cinderella to Yoda and Captain America) to be manipulated on the OpenAI video generator Sora 2. Saatchi’s announcement came soon after an A.I.-enhanced version of “The Wizard of Oz” premièred at the Sphere, in Las Vegas, a production that delighted tourists but appalled cinephiles. (The technology supersized the film’s frame, generating an endless yellow brick road and scores of eerie waving Munchkins.)
The “Ambersons” project takes a more complex ethical stance. Instead of desecrating an easily available classic, Saatchi aims to resurrect a lost one. Rather than trampling a human artist’s vision, the project positions itself on the side of the auteur, whose work had been sabotaged by a greedy studio machine. Saatchi sees himself as “righting a historic wrong.”
That wasn’t how the news landed. According to Ray Kelly, who oversees the fan site Wellesnet, opinions among Wellesians have been divided. “Some people are absolutely horrified by the notion,” Kelly told me, and some, like him, are keeping a skeptical open mind. “I don’t expect them to turn out a film that will replace the current version. I think this will be something that film enthusiasts can look at and get a feel of what Welles intended.”
Saatchi believes that A.I. is less a tool that will supplement moviemaking than a “new art form” that will compete with it. Although he lives in San Francisco, he peppers his speech with references to Marcel Duchamp and Andrei Tarkovsky that would baffle the average tech bro. He finds most A.I. projects banal—“Here’s this starfighter blowing up another starfighter,” as he put it—and wants his “Ambersons” to reach for nobler heights. “To some extent, I’ve known since I was twelve years old that there would one day be the technology to do this, to make ‘The Magnificent Ambersons,’ ” he told me. “Finally, the technology is here, and to me it would be completely insane to use A.I. for anything else.”
