Aronofsky, Blomkamp Build AI Studios on US, Chinese Models
TL;DR
- Darren Aronofsky's Primordial Soup is raising $15 million in equity per an SEC filing, working with Google DeepMind to refine the Veo video model.
- Neill Blomkamp launched Barley Studios and released NIGHTBORNE, a 13-minute sci-fi horror short built entirely on ByteDance's Chinese-made Seedance 2.0.
- Two established directors are anchoring dedicated AI production studios on opposite sides of the US and Chinese model markets.
Darren Aronofsky and Neill Blomkamp are building their next projects on generative AI, and each has picked a different side of the model market. Aronofsky's Primordial Soup, launched in 2025 through a partnership with Google DeepMind, is raising $15 million in equity according to an SEC filing, and is working with DeepMind to refine its Veo video model on projects like 'On This Day… 1776' for TIME.
Blomkamp has launched Barley Studios around ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 and released NIGHTBORNE, a 13-minute sci-fi horror short. 'NIGHTBORNE is the first full test AI film I have made. It was made using Seedance 2.0,' he wrote in a post on X, adding that he is 'at the point where I want to tackle a full feature in this format.' The Guardian's Aug. 16 piece situates both launches inside a wider group of directors leaning into the tools rather than opposing them.
The split on model choice is the interesting part. Aronofsky is building on an American video stack; Blomkamp went straight to a Chinese one for his proof-of-concept short and plans a feature on the same pipeline. It fits a pattern our tracker has watched all summer, including Bloomberg's finding that Chinese labs held nine of the top ten text-to-video slots earlier this month.
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Originally reported by theguardian.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Guardian: AI Film Startups Are Setting Up Studios in Hollywood, Blending US and Chinese Models