Black Forest Labs: Scorsese Joins as Adviser, Uses FLUX to Storyboard

LONDON, Monday, June 8, 2026 — Martin Scorsese has joined Black Forest Labs as an adviser and is using the German startup's FLUX model to storyboard his next feature, What Happens at Night, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. The partnership was disclosed June 2, six months after Black Forest Labs closed a $300 million Series B at a $3.25 billion valuation. The deal converts a hand-drawn pre-production task into a vendor pitch — and gives the Freiburg-based startup the single most consequential creator endorsement in generative AI to date.

Key Takeaways

• Scorsese signed as adviser and partner to Black Forest Labs last year; the relationship went public June 2 with a video session demoing FLUX for storyboarding.
• Black Forest Labs is valued at $3.25 billion post-money and has raised more than $450 million from a16z, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Canva, Figma Ventures and Temasek.
• Sacra estimates BFL hit $96 million in annualized revenue as of August 2025, with roughly $300 million in committed contract value across Adobe, Canva, Snap and Meta.
• The partnership was brokered via BroadLight Capital — co-founded by Scorsese's manager Rick Yorn — and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz, both BFL investors.
• Storyboard artists, VFX guilds and directors including Guillermo del Toro have publicly opposed the shift; competitors Runway, Stability AI and Midjourney are racing to lock down studio relationships of equivalent weight.

Context & Analysis

Scorsese is not a soft target for AI adoption. He spent the last decade arguing publicly for the primacy of craft and theatrical cinema. He framed the FLUX adoption as evolution rather than capitulation, citing seven decades of drawing his own storyboards and the persistent gap between a director's mental image and what the crew can execute.

The mechanics are narrow but commercially significant. Scorsese is using FLUX to mock up shots before filming on What Happens at Night, a drama about a couple traveling to a small European town to adopt a child. He told Variety the tool let his team "move faster without sacrificing quality or craft" during pre-production. Black Forest Labs CEO Robin Rombach told the New York Times the deal is "a great proof point that this works."

The corporate context matters. FLUX models are accessible through BFL's API, Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, and directly within Adobe's creative tools, and the firm operates a dual-license model targeting both enterprise platforms and developers. A Scorsese endorsement is precisely the asset BFL needs to sell into studio pre-production pipelines that have historically resisted vendor pitches from generative AI startups.

For deeper context, see our related analysis: "Studios Pilot Long-Form AI Video As Runway, Google, and NVIDIA Step Up R&D On Scene-Level Control".

Table 1: How the Scorsese / BFL deal stacks against recent AI-Hollywood moves

Company	Position	Recent Move	Source
Black Forest Labs	Image/video foundation model	Signed Scorsese as adviser; FLUX used on What Happens at Night	Variety
Stability AI	Open-source image generation	James Cameron remains on board of directors	Rolling Stone
Amazon MGM Studios	Studio	Hosting June "AI on the Lot" event with ~2,000 attendees at Culver City	TheWrap
Meta	Hyperscaler / platform	Signed multi-year FLUX licensing contract worth ~$140M (Sept 2025)	Sacra

Competitive Landscape

BFL's rivals are not standing still. Runway's Gen-4 has aggressively marketed character and scene consistency to filmmakers, and OpenAI, Google, Pika and Midjourney all compete in adjacent generative video. But Scorsese's name reshapes the buyer conversation in studio procurement departments — particularly given BFL's $3.25 billion valuation and roughly $450 million in total funding, putting it second among European generative AI companies after Mistral.

Related: Studios Pilot Long‑Form AI Video As Runway, Google, and NVIDIA Step Up R&D On Scene‑Level Control

The funding stack is unusually entertainment-aware. December's Series B was co-led by Salesforce Ventures and Anjney Midha (AMP), with participation from a16z, NVIDIA, Northzone, Creandum, BroadLight Capital, Temasek, Bain Capital Ventures, Canva and Figma Ventures. BroadLight, co-founded by Scorsese's manager Rick Yorn, was already on the cap table before the partnership. The implementation approach emphasizes maintaining PCI DSS Level 1 certification for financial transactions, Industry analysts have noted similar trends across comparable markets. As highlighted in annual shareholder communications, that market conditions support continued investment.

Additional coverage: FilmGen Benchmarks Land: Runway, Pika, and Google Veo Report 12–35% Gains in AI Film Making. Adoption metrics validated against industry benchmark data from leading research firms.

Table 2: Generative AI vendors targeting film production

Company	Category	Key Development	Impact
Black Forest Labs	Image/video diffusion (FLUX, FLUX.2)	Scorsese adviser deal; integrated in Adobe, Meta, Canva, Microsoft	Sets Tier-1 director endorsement bar
Runway	Generative video	Gen-4 markets character/scene consistency	Pressure to land equivalent name talent
Stability AI	Open-source image	Cameron on board; financial constraints noted by Sacra	Loses momentum vs. ex-Stability founders at BFL
Midjourney	Image generation	Subscription-led, no formal studio deals disclosed	Risks brand drift into hobbyist tier
Amazon MGM Studios	Studio integrator	"AI on the Lot" 2026 grew to ~2,000 attendees	Studio-side normalization of AI tooling

What It Means

For Enterprise Buyers

Studios, agencies and production companies now have a reference deployment from the most credentialed working director in American cinema. Pre-production — storyboards, concept art, pre-visualization — is where AI adoption is least contested and the ROI is cleanest. A director typing scene descriptions into FLUX rather than commissioning sketches from a human storyboard artist is a measurable cost line. Expect studio procurement teams to add generative image models to standard pre-production tooling RFPs by year-end.

For deeper context, see our AI Film Making analysis: "Impact of Netflix Warner Bros Deal on Indie Film Financing, Film Distribution and Content Acquisition".

Related: OpenUSD, OTIO and C2PA Converge as AWS, Adobe and NVIDIA Unveil New AI Filmmaking Connectors.

For Investors

BFL's $3.25 billion mark looks more defensible after this week. Rombach has said the company's revenue mix is roughly 50/50 between usage-driven API products and enterprise licensing, and Scorsese's endorsement directly de-risks the enterprise licensing pipeline into studios. Watch for follow-on secondary activity, and for Runway and Stability AI to court name directors to match.

Forward Outlook

Three milestones to watch. First: whether What Happens at Night credits FLUX in the production materials, setting a precedent for AI tooling disclosure. Second: Amazon's "AI on the Lot" conference this June in Culver City, where attendance has scaled from 600 to a projected 2,000. Third: whether the DGA, WGA or storyboard artist unions issue formal guidance on generative pre-production tools before the next bargaining cycle. Black Forest Labs has also signaled plans to incorporate text-to-video into its product roadmap, which would push the company directly into Runway's lane.

Additional coverage: AI film startups race to reinvent production, post, and IP

Related: AI Film Making Outlook 2026: Industry Signals and Vendor Advances.

Additional coverage: Investors roll cameras on AI Film Making.

For deeper context, see our related analysis: "AI film startups race to reinvent production, post, and IP".

Related: Meta Cannes Film Festival 2026: AI Glasses and Creator Strategy Reshape

FAQ

1. What exactly did Martin Scorsese sign with Black Forest Labs?

Scorsese signed as an adviser and partner. The relationship was disclosed publicly on June 2, 2026, alongside a video showing him using FLUX to storyboard a scene for his upcoming film What Happens at Night. It is not publicly confirmed whether Scorsese personally invested.

2. What is FLUX and how is it being used in film production?

FLUX is Black Forest Labs' family of generative image (and now video) diffusion models. In Scorsese's case, FLUX is generating storyboard images from text descriptions to help him communicate visual intent to his cinematographer, production designer and art designer during pre-production.

3. Who else among major directors uses generative AI?

James Cameron sits on the board of Stability AI. Peter Jackson has publicly described AI as "a special effect." Gareth Edwards has said he wants to make a hybrid generative AI film. Steven Soderbergh used AI tools for sequences in his Lennon documentary.

For deeper context, see our Investments analysis: "Tangled Secures $4.5M to Challenge GitHub in Europe, 2026".

4. Why are storyboard artists and some directors opposed?

Storyboarding is a paid creative role inside studio production. Generative tools that produce reference images from text prompts can compress or eliminate that line item. Directors including Guillermo del Toro have publicly rejected generative AI on creative grounds.

5. What is Black Forest Labs' valuation and business model?

BFL closed a $300 million Series B in December 2025 at a $3.25 billion post-money valuation. The company runs a dual-license model — open-weights for community use plus commercial licensing and a hosted API for enterprise. Its FLUX models are integrated into Adobe, Meta, Canva, Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Elon Musk's Grok.

Sources include company disclosures, regulatory filings, analyst reports, and industry briefings.

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