Martin Scorsese has joined Black Forest Labs as an adviser and is now using the company’s FLUX tool to storyboard scenes, a public embrace of generative AI from one of Hollywood’s most closely watched directors. In a video filmed in his New York City office, Scorsese walked through how the software can help him shape a scene before cameras roll.
The timing matters because Hollywood is entering another wave of AI adoption, and Scorsese is not approaching it as a distant experiment. He said cinema is only around 125 years old and has to remain open to how it evolves, adding that he has already used 3D in Hugo and de-aging technology in The Irishman. This time, he said, the tool helps him share what he is visualizing more clearly and efficiently with his creative team — the production designer, art designer and cinematographer — so they can build on it faster.
That team is the point. Scorsese said the goal is not to hand filmmaking over to a machine, but to give the people around him a clearer visual map. In the video, he talked about staging the Copacabana Steadicam shot from Goodfellas and said a tool like FLUX could help him figure it out “much much quicker,” save production time and reduce wear and tear on the crew. Black Forest Labs said the partnership is meant to push the bounds of creativity and create deeper, richer experiences for audiences, and chief executive Robin Rombach called Scorsese’s involvement “a great proof point that this works.”
The move also lands in the middle of a split inside the film business over generative AI. Peter Jackson said last month that he does not dislike AI and compared it to a special effect. Guillermo Del Toro, by contrast, said last month that he would rather die than use generative AI in his films, underscoring how sharply the debate still divides even the most acclaimed directors. Scorsese’s decision places him firmly on the more experimental side of that argument.
There are still pieces of the deal left unexplained. Scorsese was introduced to Black Forest Labs through BroadLight Capital, which was co-founded by his manager Rick Yorn, and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz helped seal the partnership, according to. But it remains unclear whether Scorsese himself has invested in the company, and neither Black Forest Labs nor his representative immediately commented on that point. For now, the bigger takeaway is simpler: one of the most influential filmmakers of his generation is not just tolerating AI, he is using it to plan the next shot.
