Martin Scorsese has signed on as an advisor to Black Forest Labs, the AI lab behind the FLUX image model family, with the company framing his role around using its tools for pre-production storyboarding. The announcement, posted on BFL's site, pairs a written statement from Scorsese with a two-minute video of the director working through a storyboard session using FLUX.
Scorsese's stated use case is storyboarding, not finished image generation. BFL positions his involvement around speeding up the visual handoff between a director and their department heads. According to the announcement, Scorsese tested the tool on a scene during pre-production and described the result as "creatively freeing."
A director who has hand-drawn his own storyboards for 70 years is using FLUX to share visualizations with department heads
Scorsese's quote in the announcement frames the tool as a communication problem-solver rather than a generative shortcut. "For 70 years, I've been creating my own storyboards," he said. "There's always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew. There are some things you have to see and feel."
The director points specifically to the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer as the audience for the FLUX-assisted boards. He also draws a line back to earlier technology adoption in his own filmography:
I utilized 3D with Hugo and de-aging technology for The Irishman. Now, with this tool, I can share what I'm visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team, the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer, for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence.
Scorsese adds that during pre-production, "time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft." BFL's working storyboarding session video, posted to YouTube, shows the director working through that process with the model.
The advisor role extends BFL's filmmaker-facing positioning that began with the FLUX.2 launch
Black Forest Labs frames the partnership around "visual intelligence," which the company defines as "models that can reason in the physical and digital worlds." The same foundation, BFL writes, "can support everyone from storytellers to architects, designers, and engineers, and power tools from animation to robotics."
That filmmaker positioning is not new for the company. We covered the FLUX.2 family launch, when BFL released FLUX.2, FLUX.2 Max, and FLUX.2 Klein with NVIDIA RTX optimization and open weights for some variants. FLUX.2 Klein also surfaced in our Denoised episode notes as part of the open-weights conversation among filmmakers experimenting with local image pipelines. FLUX.2 also showed up in our end-of-year image model roundup alongside Kling, Seedream, and Z-image, where it stood out as one of the few releases shipping both an API and open weights.
BFL describes the role as advisor only, with no equity, term, or production commitment disclosed
The bfl.ai announcement page does not specify the structure of the relationship. There is no mention of equity, compensation, a multi-film commitment, or a fixed term. BFL describes the arrangement only as Scorsese "helping us shape visual intelligence as an advisor."
The company frames its end of the relationship around keeping "human taste, values, and judgment at the center" of how FLUX evolves, and says Scorsese "wants to use FLUX to help bring his ideas to life." Beyond the storyboarding scene Scorsese mentions, BFL does not name a specific production the tool is being used on.
Scorsese's own statement closes by pointing back to the youth of cinema itself. "Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve," he said.
