Martin Scorsese has directed some of the most celebrated films in cinema history. Now, for the first time in decades, he has managed to unite a Hollywood union against him.
On June 2, 2026, the director of Goodfellas and Killers of the Flower Moon publicly declared his partnership with German AI startup Black Forest Labs, endorsing the use of its generative AI model FLUX for storyboarding during film pre-production. In a promotional video shot at Scorsese’s New York office, he demonstrates using FLUX to visualize scenes from his upcoming film What Happens at Night — a drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence about an American couple adopting a child in a small European town.
“Cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve,” Scorsese said. He described FLUX as allowing him to communicate his vision “more clearly and efficiently” to his creative team, adding that in pre-production, “time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft.”
The Art Directors Guild, IATSE Local 800, saw things very differently.
The union — representing storyboard artists, production designers, graphic artists, illustrators, and scenic artists — released a statement with a pointed subject line: “Mr. Scorsese, The Business is not in flux.” The guild accused Scorsese of “turning his back on the human artists who throughout his career have helped him create his most memorable works,” calling his endorsement “a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema.” The statement also noted that FLUX is likely built on work “stolen” from the very artists now being displaced.
The connection to Black Forest Labs runs through overlapping financial relationships: BroadLight Capital, co-founded by Scorsese’s longtime manager Rick Yorn, is a BFL investor, and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz — also an angel investor in BFL — helped broker the partnership.
What makes this dispute particularly resonant is Scorsese’s stature. He has long positioned himself as a defender of cinema against algorithmic content. His embrace of AI pre-production tools doesn’t just signal a personal pivot — it deprives Hollywood’s AI-skeptic camp of one of its most credible voices. For the short-form and microdrama industry, where AI storyboarding tools are already in daily use (often out of budget necessity), the high-profile legitimization of these tools by a prestige filmmaker could accelerate adoption and the displacement of creative workers — far beyond what the ADG anticipated.
Sources: Martin Scorsese Supports AI Company, Using It to Storyboard Movies – Variety – Martin Scorsese Backs AI Company for Storyboard Use: ‘Creatively Freeing’ – Hollywood Reporter – Martin Scorsese Joins Black Forest Labs as AI Adviser for New DiCaprio Film – Tech Times – Martin Scorsese × Black Forest Labs (offizielle Ankündigung)
