Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (The Whale) has officially released an animated short-form TV show about the American Revolution through his AI studio Primordial Soup. Titled as On This Day… 1776, the AI TV show’s official trailer and first two episodes are now available on Time’s YouTube channel.
Time Studios will be releasing the remaining episodes of the short-form series throughout the year. This comes ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.
“This project is a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like — not replacing craft, but expanding what’s possible and allowing storytellers to go places they simply couldn’t before,” Time Studios’ Ben Bitonti said in a statement.
Check out the trailer for On This Day… 1776 below (watch more trailers):
What do we know about Darren Aronofsky’s AI TV show?
On This Day… 1776 was produced by Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind. It is described as a “combination of traditional filmmaking tools and emerging AI capabilities.” In addition to using AI technology, the Requiem for a Dream director also tapped SAG actors to provide voice narration in telling each episode’s fact-based stories.
Each episode will center around a key historical moment from 1776. The first installment follows George Washington in Somerville, Mass, where he raised the Continental Union Flag to improve his men’s morale. As for its second episode, it features Benjamin Franklin encouraging Thomas Paine to give voice to common sense.
The show is executive-produced by Aronofsky, Ari Handel, and Lucas Sussman, with Jordan Dykstra providing the original score. Sussman also led the historical drama’s writers’ room. According to their statement, the project’s goal is “reframing the Revolution not as a foregone conclusion but as a fragile experiment shaped by those who fought for it.”