Category: Entertainment

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.

School’s officially out for summer at Kyle University.

The 7-foot muscle-head has spent the last four weeks making the rounds on social media, accruing more than 60 million views and 30,000 Instagram followers and becoming the manosphere’s latest “high-value” poster boy. His Tate brothers-esque content — built around seducing women, “looksmaxxing” and collecting “aura points” — swiftly got him banned from TikTok.

But it turns out, Kyle’s entire red-pill brand is actually just some savvy film publicity.

The Hollywood Reporter can reveal that the costumed “manosphere recruiters” galavanting around the industry’s most renowned studios and offices across Los Angeles and London this week are indeed the finale act of this viral sensation. All along, Kyle University has been an anti-manosphere satirical campaign using social media as an elaborate Trojan horse to draw Hollywood’s attention to Impressionable, the debut film from 22-year-old British director Noah Caplan.

Kyle, the faux character and self-proclaimed “lion in a world of dolphins” (played by U.S. bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn), has captured Instagram, YouTube and Facebook users. He’s fooled a sizable chunk of the manosphere, including several well-known red-pill commentators who hurled abuse at feminist creators Izzy Taffs and Maia Wall.

Since Caplan’s elaborate bit went live, studios and talent reps swept in to express interest — momentum that the young filmmaker wanted to jump on. The bait-and-switch culminated in a stunt outside major entertainment hubs in Los Angeles and London on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Kyles have popped up, enrollment papers in hand, pitching a made-up online course to top executives outside the likes of the BBC, Lionsgate, the British Film Institute, UTA, Working Title, WME, Channel 4, and major streamers. On the L.A. hit list was Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment, where a Kyle asked security if he could “talk to the Ken in charge.” The targets are hand-picked by Caplan as his “dream collaborators” on Impressionable — from Warner Bros. Clockwork division to U.K. distributor True Brit — which is currently seeking packaging, financing and distribution.

A slew of young, digital talent coming up through the ranks of social media were enlisted for the stunt. Comedians Rufus Rice, Auden Barnes (“UncleBenMyBrudda”), Tommy Solemn, “Toshua,” “Panchbantz” and Ben McGuinness all appeared as various manosphere characters across the campaign, with some of them even playing the Kyle University recruits this week.

Inside the leaflets flung at reception desks and staff was a heartfelt pitch from Caplan about Impressionable, a satirical coming-of-age comedy-drama following a teenage boy’s idolization of a manosphere influencer, which manifests as a fictional mentor. The feature aims to “tackle toxic masculinity while positively spotlighting the real, everyday men who actually shape a young boy’s life.”

Caplan, who founded his own talent management agency YOOF, has no inherited network or contacts in the film industry. At 17, he persuaded British star Danny Dyer to star in his 30-minute mental health awareness drama (later acquired by ITV) by DM’ing hundreds of the actor’s friends on social media. THR caught up with Caplan about talking Dyer into the film last year, where he elaborated on getting his film education through YouTube, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons-style.

He gave up on cold-emailing studios about Impressionable and decided to get more creative. “I was always going to find a way, even if it took another three years,” Caplan tells THR. “What we’ve built with Kyle University though is a stronger pitch than any email I could ever have sent.”

“Kyle is bait, and that’s the whole point. We’ve replicated the manosphere’s entire ecosystem with a character who’s dangerous yet entertaining. You could stumble on a harmless clip of this douchey frat-bro, find it funny, and hit follow. It might not be until a few posts in that his real agenda creeps in: the misogyny, the bigotry, the peddling of self-hatred for profit.”

Caplan, however, is careful not to mock the young men who fall for it.

“We’re not here to vilify the audience who get pulled in,” he says about his captive audience. “I’ve had mates pulled in, and some of it even skimmed close to me in the most vulnerable moments of my own adolescence. But hopefully Impressionable can expose that mad old monopoly, and show young men there’s a more whimsical way to figure out who you are, without leaning on some parasocial stranger to tell you who that is.”

Caplan admits the stunt was “cheeky.” He continued: “We want our project noticed by the industry we admire so greatly. Coming from Essex, England, there aren’t too many talent scouts or film and TV power-brokers hanging around. Emails get ignored, cold calls are outdated and annoying. We thought this could not just get us in front of the right people, but also generate a bit of fun in such a madly busy town for a couple of days.”

And if nothing else, he hopes it brightened a few people’s Tuesday or Wednesday.

Says Caplan: “For the executives […] coming face-to-face with a 7ft, 300lb man in neon headbands and multi-colored bicep tassels might just be the midweek pick-me-up they needed. I hope it caught people’s interest, or at least intrigued them. And if not, I hope we managed to entertain a few people on their daily commute.”

Jason Alexander has issued an apology to Courtney Stodden for an inappropriate 2012 Funny or Die sketch, in which the Seinfeld actor rubbed a cellphone on Stodden’s breasts when she was a mere 17.

“Looking back at the comedy sketch in which Ms. Stodden and I participated in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and I truly regret it,” Alexander said in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”

However, in a follow-up statement shared with THR after Alexander’s apology was widely reported on by the press, Stodden said, “I appreciate Jason Alexander’s public apology. People keep asking if he’s apologized privately, and he hasn’t. A private apology would be meaningful, but meaningful action would be even more powerful.”

“If he truly regrets what happened, I’d invite him to support Unchained At Last and the fight to end child marriage through AB 1267,” she continued. “That’s how we turn accountability into lasting change.”

In a Monday Instagram post, Stodden shared a photo from the sketch, where she was wearing a red bikini top and Alexander had a phone over top her breast. In the caption, she explained that she was underage when it was filmed. She wrote, “Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ‘plenty of signal’ in my chest.”

“Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me. IMDb credits him as one of the writers of the episode. As an adult, that fact has become harder — not easier — for me to understand,” she continued. “I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to Doug [Hutchison]. The production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone.”

The model wed her ex-husband The Green Mile actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16. He was 51. In her Instagram post, she said, looking back, she questions how any adult allowed the sketch to occur.

“Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke. People still say, ‘You chose to be there.’ Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions for myself. That’s the point. I can’t change what happened to me but I can ask myself: How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable?” she wrote. “That’s exactly why I speak out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.”

Ridley Scott and Hugh Jackman are taking their Treasure Island movie to Sony, which is in talks to acquire the package from the duo.

Scott will direct from a script by Jack Thorne, with Jackman starring in the feature based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel. The classic book told the story of a boy, Jim Hawkins, who sets sail to a remote island after discovering a treasure map.

More to come.

AI “actor” Tilly Norwood will never be eligible for a BAFTA Film Award, the British Academy has confirmed, amid updates to its rulebook and voting processes.

BAFTA is now reserving the right to ask for more information regarding the use of AI and “the extent of human creative involvement” in work submitted for Film Awards consideration. Following “industry consultation,” BAFTA has clarified its approach to AI and on Wednesday said its Awards are “presented annually to recognise, honour and reward individuals for outstanding human achievement in originating, shaping and realising the final artistic outcome, regardless of the tools used to bring this work to life.”

Where the use of generative AI or other digital tools is relevant to the consideration of films, BAFTA can request additional information.

“[Artificial intelligence] is obviously evolving at a very fast pace,” executive director of awards and content at BAFTA, Emma Baehr, told The Hollywood Reporter in a media briefing about the changes. “We’re aware that AI and digital tools are used in some areas more than others. But we felt that it was very important that we expanded that and acknowledged that if anything comes up, we have the right to request further information because ultimately BAFTA is about recognizing human achievement.”

While things may change again next year, Baehr said the language used in the updated rulebook allows the film committee at BAFTA to “dig into” specific uses of AI ahead of the longlist and nominations announcements. There isn’t a specific percentage or “exact science” that would rule out an AI-aided film from contention for a BAFTA, but Baehr maintains the focus is on human creativity.

For example, THR asked, what would the 2027 approach be to Adrien Brody’s BAFTA and Oscar-winning role in The Brutalist? (The actor was said to have used AI to help with his Hungarian accent in Brady Corbet’s 2024 film.) Baehr responded: “[The updates] would rule out an AI actor. It’s going to be a human that collects a BAFTA. We’re never going to allow an AI actor [to win a BAFTA]. But we never really comment on what’s happened in the past because the rules are the rules for that year, and every year it changes. So Adrien Brody was eligible; he won. We celebrated that win, and that was within that year in that rulebook. So, as we said, AI is moving so fast, but we have to go back to what we’ve already said about human creativity, and that is the essence of it. We want to celebrate that.”

When asked for confirmation that Norwood — the AI “actor” who last year plunged the industry into crisis around the ethicality of AI performers, and who is about to make her feature film debut — will not ever be eligible for a BAFTA, Baehr was firm: “No. No. That’s not human.”

Baehr and Deirdre Hopkins, head of film at BAFTA, declined to comment on the possibility of one day introducing a craft category entirely devoted to AI-generated projects.

Among other changes are BAFTA’s expansion of the outstanding British film category, taking the longlist from 15 to 20 films to “better showcase the depth and range of British filmmaking and create a wider pool of British titles for consideration.” The category will retain 10 nominations, with five chosen by the membership vote and five by the nominating jury.

BAFTA is also broadening participation in the performance categories’ voting process by inviting Casting Chapter members to vote alongside the Acting Chapter in the longlisting and nomination rounds. As part of the update, the longlisting jury will now select five performers on the longlist. These changes will bring “additional industry expertise to these categories and support wider recognition of acting talent.”

In other news, the children’s & family film category will be renamed family film, bringing the category title into “closer alignment with its focus on films that appeal across generations.” The new name is said to better reflect the types of films eligible for consideration and provides greater clarity for entrants, voters and jurors, while the eligibility criteria and voting process remain unchanged.

Entries for the 2027 BAFTA Film Awards are open from Wednesday, July 22. The longlist will be announced on Jan. 7, 2027, the nominations on Jan. 29, and the ceremony on Feb. 21.

And so Elon Musk‘s anti-Odyssey campaign continues: The X owner and recently-anointed trillionaire has vowed that his AI social media bot, Grok, will make “a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer” before the end of the year.

His post on Wednesday was accompanied by a three-minute AI-generated short that a follower had made using Grok Imagine.

It comes as the South African businessman continues to rile up his supporters in a real culture war over Christopher Nolan‘s box office behemoth. His commentary on the film dates to January, when rumors of Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy first began circulating. He has criticized Nolan and Hollywood for their “woke” agenda, despite wide acknowledgement from actual historians that Homer’s work is, of course, a piece of fiction.

In May, Musk agreed with a racist comment made by a far-right journalist who took aim at the Oscar-winning actress’ involvement: “We’re told that we shouldn’t object to Helen of Troy being portrayed as a black woman,” said Daily Wire‘s Matt Walsh. “And yet if a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa and cast a white woman as ‘the most beautiful woman in Africa,’ those same people would literally riot in the street. If, say, Sydney Sweeney was cast in the role, they’d be driven to murderous violence. We all know this is the case.”

Musk chimed in via the comment section of Walsh’s post: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

It isn’t the only cast announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX founder has taken issue with. When rumors surfaced that trans actor Elliot Page might be cast as Achilles, he reacted even more forcefully, saying: “One of the dumbest and most twisted things I’ve ever heard.” (Musk, who has a trans daughter from his first marriage, Vivian Jenna Wilson, has historically made transphobic attacks against his own daughter. She has cut ties with him.) It’s also worth noting that Page does not play Achilles in Nolan’s film — he portrays Sinon, a Greek soldier incorporated into the story from Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid.

So, it isn’t entirely surprising Musk would attempt to make his own Odyssey with what will be — judging from the short snippet he reposted on Wednesday — an all-white cast. Grok Imagine’s retelling of the Homer epic will likely only make Nolan’s feat look even more of a masterpiece, especially since it was shot entirely on Imax film and used extremely little CGI.

Nolan himself has called the backlash over historical accuracy “irrelevant.” He said: “Comes with the territory… These conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

And for all of the outrage Musk has drummed up around The Odyssey, the film has not notably suffered at the box office at all. The retelling of classical Greek mythology got the box office back on track over the weekend, scoring $124.5 million on 3,900 North American screens.

Earning an A CinemaScore from audiences, the film sailed away to 2026’s biggest live-action opening, with only Toy Story 5 ($159 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million) debuting above it. The Odyssey also claimed the top R-rated opening of the year and Universal’s highest weekend launch ever for an R-rated movie.

Globally, The Odyssey collected $264.1 million, adding $139.6 million from 73 international markets. The film marks Nolan’s biggest worldwide opening of all time, topping The Dark Knight Rises’ $249 million global launch in 2012.