Martin Scorsese’s partnership with a Gen AI studio has sparked discussion about the use of AI in pre-production and film-making.
It was announced that legendary director and film archivist Martin Scorsese is “an advisor to” Black Forest Labs, a generative AI studio. And boy, do folks have thoughts.
Scorsese’s Own Storyboards
Many have been inspired by the hand-drawn storyboards from some of Scorsese’s own classic films:
Scorsese’s storyboards for Taxi Driver were a big inspiration for me, a poor artist, to feel confident drawing ideas to share with our illustrators. I can’t understand why so much of the older generation of artists are swayed by this crap when they already had it all figured out. – @TrainDetective
Film Lovers Respond
Many shared examples of hand-drawn storyboards from celebrated film-makers:
Other Reactions
Some focused on implicatons for the industry:
Others, such as movie platform Mubi, share the use of handmade storyboards and behind-the-scenes from films such as director Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Amores Perros (2000):
Film-Makers Respond
Writer-director Boots Riley shared his own original storyboards from his film I Love Boosters (2026):
Kane Parsons, director of Backrooms (2026), on how “outsourcing” the creative process defeats the purpose as an artist, and disengages him as a viewer (clipped from the full interview, via CBS):
Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director of the box office-topping film “Backrooms,” is “absolutely not” going to embrace AI, explaining that he doesn’t “see the value in, like, outsourcing” the making of art. pic.twitter.com/iVuUiTxGxy
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) June 4, 2026
Scorsese’s bestie, Bong Joon Ho, storyboarded Parasite (2019) so meticulously that we looked at his pre-production work in more detail here:
Further Viewing
Here’s a bunch of examples of storyboard vs final film, side-by-side:
Using Saul Bass‘ storyboards for Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (1960) as a case study, we look at storyboarding as part of the larger pre-production stage of film-making: