What’s the opposite of Absolute Cinema? According to the New York Times, Martin Scorsese has accepted a role as an advisor for a generative AI firm and, even more devastatingly, has apparently started to use the technology during the storyboarding process for his next film. The company in question is Black Forest Labs, the maker of text-to-image and video models, including Flux, which has been used for image and video generation by companies including Adobe, VSCO, and xAI. And if you’re wondering how Marty ended up involved with them, well, you can probably blame his agents—though you don’t have to give the director a total pardon. Per the Times, Scorsese’s talent manager, Rick Yorn, is the co-founder of BroadLight Capital, one of the firms that has invested in Black Forest Films. Michael Ovitz, the founder of Creative Artists Agency and a former neighbor of Scorsese, is also an investor and probably had Marty’s ear on the whole project. Notably, Scorsese didn’t speak directly with the Times about his adviser role.
But if you’ve been listening to Marty over the last few years, it’s clear he’s not as averse to AI as some other creatives. In 2023, as AI was becoming more commercially available, Scorsese said that he hoped it would have a positive impact on the art form. “My hopes are such that with the new technology and the new generations and younger people seeing the world in a different way, that cinema will evolve itself into a new form,” he said during an appearance on Sky News’ Backstage podcast.
