Sorry in advance for this, but: do you remember back in January when Darren Aronofsky, director of the best movie ever made about computers and math, produced a series of AI shorts about the founding fathers, and they sucked?
No? Here, let me jog your memory:
If you can make it through that entire clip, you’ll notice at the very end there’s a logo for something called Primordial Soup. Primordial Soup calls itself “an AI-native storytelling studio founded by acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky.” Vanity Fair says the company has an unofficial motto: “Make soup not slop,” which maybe it will do at some point. Many of them are even less appealing than the one above, particularly whenever Benjamin Franklin is involved, for some reason.
At any rate, Aronofsky’s company is raking in investor money as it staffs up, according to the Hollywood Reporter. An SEC filing says the company, of which producer Dylan Golden is also an executive officer in addition to Aronofsky, is seeking $15 million in the form of an equity raise, and $11 million of that has already come in.
There are tons of projects like this now, and as a human being who makes money by expressing himself creatively, it pains me to report that not all of them have been disasters.
For instance, while it probably is not on your radar if you are a Gizmodo reader, the conservative company Angel Studios released a biopic of George Washington earlier this month, and it was generally regarded as mostly fine, if generic. The makers of that movie, however, smuggled in a ton of AI effects, which didn’t really get much attention. They apparently weren’t bad enough to make it a laughingstock because it’s been a modest box office hit.
And when you consider that Primordial Soup’s founding fathers clips were a project of inscrutable lineage, but apparently made as a partnership between Time, Google Deepmind, and—of all companies—Salesforce, a clearer picture emerges of why Aronofsky might be doing this: people are willing to throw money at it, and, perhaps more to the point, at him.
Remember, a film by Aronofsky was part of the breathtakingly lucrative opening slate of events at the Sphere in Las Vegas. His project alone grossed $44.5 million for the Sphere in one quarter, out-earning the Sphere’s U2 performance. And if you watch videos of people reacting to Aronofsky’s Sphere movie, it honestly seems like money well spent.
And Primordial Soup already says it plans to make “branded content,” as part of its content plan. So it seems reasonable to deduce that with all the tech- and AI-curious brands and investors out there looking to partner with a familiar name, one that’s been attached in the past to successful hi-tech filmmaking projects, Aronofsky probably sounds like what they’re looking for. So I wouldn’t bet against this company.
But then again, it did make this:
Read the full article here
