Darren Aronofsky Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival Primordial Soup, the AI Film and content studio launched by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, Black Swan, Requiem For a Dream) is raising cash as AI-first filmmaking continues to proliferate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Earlier this month Primordial Soup Labs, Inc., which lists Aronofsky and his producing partner Dylan Golden as executive officers, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a $15 million equity raise.
The document said that the company had sold just over $11 million of that total so far, with the first sale taking place July 1.
It is not clear what Primordial Soup will use the cash for, though the company’s website suggests that it is in the midst of something that amounts to a hiring spree, with open roles for “generative artists,” social media strategists, a chief of staff, and a “Head of Studio.”
The head of studio role underscores the scale of the endeavor, with the description noting that the person they hire will run content strategy and studio operations. “You’ll oversee the development, production and commercialization of our slate, including digital-first creator content, feature films, television series, and branded content,” the description states.
That suggests that Primordial Soup will supplement its film and TV projects with commercials and AI creator content.
Aronofsky and his spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A growing number of Hollywood traditionalists are diving into AI. Martin Scorsese is using the tech for storyboarding, a veteran Doctor Who director is developing an animated AI film and studios including A24 and Lionsgate have forged creative partnerships with AI companies.
Aronofsky has been focused on cutting-edge tech for years, becoming an early pioneer in 2018 with a three-part VR project called Spheres he produced from filmmaker Eliza McNitt and then of course making Postcard from Earth for The Sphere in Las Vegas several years ago.
Primordial Soup launched just over a year ago with the tagline of “make soup not slop” and formed a non-exclusive filmmaking partnership with Google DeepMind that allowed him to experiment with the company’s tools.
As part of that partnership, he and McNitt produced Ancestra, a 45-minute featurette (and first in a planned trilogy) about a mother and memory. They debuted it at Tribeca in 2025, where Aronofsky took the stage with McNitt and a DeepMind exec to say that, “There are a lot of ways to use these models. I’m mostly interested in figuring out how to use these models to tell stories.”
The director took an even more public role on behalf of AI filmmaking — and plenty of backlash for it — when this winter he premiered On This Day, a set of American Revolution-themed live-action shorts that used AI generations of historical figures. Critics pilloried the project for uncanny-valley vibes, though the work did get more refined as it went. Last month he announced a pivot of sorts for the series, saying he was trying an animated approach — then dropped an anime-inspired episode in which Thomas Jefferson fights King George III in a boxing ring and says lines like “Kneel before this, bitch.”
While AI filmmaking is a lot cheaper than the traditional kind, the potential use of voice actors, consultation of department heads and, perhaps most important, time for writers and directors to shape a story all cost money, and it stands to reason the Soup capital-raise will be used to help produce even more content, pushing the envelope along the way.
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