{"id":41108,"date":"2026-05-16T16:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/41108\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T16:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:19:10","slug":"darren-aronofsky-talks-ai-project-on-this-day-1776","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/41108\/","title":{"rendered":"Darren Aronofsky Talks AI Project On This Day\u2026 1776"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBlack Swan and Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky<\/a> has revealed he is pushing on with American Revolution-themed AI<\/a> project On This Day\u2026 1776, the first part of which was widely panned on its release in January.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director told the AI for Talent Summit in Cannes<\/a> on Saturday that the spirit of the project, made under the banner of his AI-based studio Primordial Soup, was purely experimental.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe explained he had hit on the idea of the project in November 2025 in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like could we make 30, 35 \u00a0five-minute-long films about what happened on this day 250 years ago. It was always seen as an experiment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said the quality of the AI-driven work had come on leaps and bounds since the release of the first episode at the beginning for year, which was widely slammed by Aronofsky fans. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you look at the first release we did in January, and then you compare it to the project we just released on April 29, it\u2019s mind blowing. It\u2019s not just the models. It\u2019s also Primordial Soup\u2019s pipeline, and it\u2019s also the artists we\u2019re working with who are getting better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI encourage you to watch it, because it\u2019s an experiment to see how it\u2019s going to progress, and we\u2019re 1\/4 of the year done and by December 24 when George Washington is crossing the Delaware, it\u2019s going to be a whole another level of what is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAronofsky was talking in conversation with James Manyika, President, Research, Labs, Technology & Society at Google on the second day of the Cannes March\u00e9 du Film\u2019s AI for Talent Summit.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis company Primordial Soup is making its Cannes Official Selection debut this year with the short film Goodnight Lamby by Dustin Yellin, which plays in Cannes Classics on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe told Manyika that his curiosity in AI as a filmmaking tool had first been piqued by images coming out of generative AI App Midjourney in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was just blown away because I instantly realized that it was going to change everything that we do as filmmakers, it was going to have a huge impact. I wasn\u2019t really sure what it would be, I formed Primordial Soup because I wanted to be ready to somehow get involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoodnight Lamby is the fruit of a joint creative initiative between Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind to make three short films combining live action with AI.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also include Eliza McNitt\u2019s Ancestra, which played at Tribeca, and documentary Love Rendered by Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, which is in post-production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat\u2019s been an amazing thing about it, and to cut to the chase, because there\u2019s so much fear out there about this, none of these movies, at least the ones that we\u2019re originating, would exist without this technology. Meaning they\u2019re not replacing anything, they\u2019re purely additive,\u201d said Aronofsky.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe dismissed \u201cthe myth\u201d that AI-supported works are simply the product of putting the right prompts into an AI App.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m sure Google would love that to be the reality\u2026 but that technology is so far away and such a science fiction idea\u2026 it takes a tremendous amount of human labor and artistry and intention to make anything good with this technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAronofsky recounted how AI had been used to generate the image of an newborn child in Ancestra, which is inspired by the director McNitt\u2019s own traumatic birth story.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen she was born, she almost died because she was born with a hole in her heart. She wanted to recreate this to honor her mother. For any filmmaker, shooting with a newborn baby causes many, many problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s the deeply ethical issues of bringing a newborn baby to set,\u201d he said, adding jokingly, \u201cand do you actually want to be hanging out with parents who are willing to bring their newborn baby to a set\u2026 in a couple of days we were able to take whatever the actress was holding and turn it into a live baby, so it just solved a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAronofsky acknowledged fears over the impact of AI on creative industry jobs and human creativity, but suggested that ultimately the technology would liberate artists across all mediums.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe pointed to Yellin\u2019s Cannes Classics-selected Goodnight, Lamby, featuring Chris Rock and Paul Rudd<\/a> in the voice cast, as an example of this. The work taps into the multidisciplinary artist Yellin\u2019s sculptures featuring layers of glass and collage work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor years he\u2019s been trying to bring it to life, but the kind of effort and economy that it would take to bring something like that to life is incredibly challenging\u2026 this technology unlocked an incredible way to get it done. It\u2019s basically about Dustin and his daughter. His daughter is playing his daughter, but leave it to Dustin to get Paul Rudd to play him and then add Chris Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBasically his daughter enters one of his sculptures and becomes a character in the sculpture. It\u2019s just incredibly fun, beautiful, he said suggesting it was in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, or The Red Balloon. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m excited Cannes is leaning forward with these technologies, because once again, this is a film that would not have existed without this technology. They agreed to show it, I had a feeling, because of the tradition of The Red Balloon, and those types of movies here at this festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe reveals that Love Rendered goes behind the scenes of a collaboration between Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind to try to create technology to help people who are losing their memories later in life by recreating them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s so much push back against it, and I\u2019d just love to talk about that the word AI for a second, as for AI is a terrible word. It\u2019s a catchphrase for so many different things, and I think that the thing we deal with when we\u2019re talking to Chat GPT about what the weather is, or what we\u2019re going to do this day, or how we\u2019re going to spend three days in Cannes, is very different than the AI we\u2019re using when we generate images,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not impersonating a person, it\u2019s actually a tool, and it\u2019s very much in the tradition of the evolution of filmmaking. From when sound was first introduced, there was incredible pushback from all the people playing usable instruments. When the portable camera came, we suddenly got films like Breathless and the French New Wave. When VFX came, that unlocked the superhero film,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to change a lot. It\u2019s not necessarily replacing, and arguably there will be many additive elements to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAronofsky added that if had been an emerging filmmaker in his 20s today he would be experimenting with AI but he added that he did not believe that the technology would ultimately replace the cinema. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGuillermo del Toro, Leonardo DiCaprio movies at IMAX will always exist, and people will always want to go see those movies, and I will continue to make movies like that. All that type of filmmaking will always exist\u2026 it\u2019s not one or the other.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHe also challenged notions that AI will replace human storytellers and directors, suggesting rather it could liberate artists, pointing to the example of Orson Welles.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not anywhere in our lifetimes, no matter how much time a computer is going to spend trying to figure out how to tell a human story, it\u2019s just such a huge effort beyond any single person on the planet telling a story, so that\u2019s not really the danger,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt may actually be even easier to tell stories\u2026 Orson Welles being the perfect example of many years did that genius waste trying to raise money to do his art or fight for his cut, versus if Orson Welles could just sit there and be wherever his creative mind wanted to go create. That\u2019s the exciting part of storytelling. I think storytellers more than ever will have an easier time to tell stories.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky has revealed he is pushing on with American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,11163,22509,18177,25090],"class_list":["post-41108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-darren-aronofsky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}