PRIMORDIAL SOUP ANNOUNCES ‘ON THIS DAY… 1776’

The First Two Episodes Are Now Streaming on TIME’s YouTube Channel

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s new AI studio, Primordial Soup, has announced the animated series On This Day… 1776. The project will revive key events from America’s founding year and will be distributed by TIME Studios on TIME’s YouTube platform over the course of 2026. This short-form series blends conventional filmmaking techniques with new artificial intelligence to present brief narratives centered on the Revolutionary War.

Every installment reconstructs scenes from 1776 to coincide with their 250th anniversaries, portraying the Revolution as a precarious undertaking molded by its participants, rather than an inevitable outcome. Based on historical documents, the series features animation created by artists employing various generative AI tools, voice work by SAG actors, an original musical score, and is finished by a post-production team handling editing, mixing, and color grading.

The initial two episodes introduce a year-long exploration of 1776. The first episode, “,” begins by depicting the raising of the Grand Union Flag on Prospect Hill, precisely 250 years after the event. The second episode, “,” tracks Thomas Paine’s journey from England, where Benjamin Franklin motivates him to articulate ideas others avoided, leading to a pamphlet that creates waves throughout the colonies and beyond.

Ben Bitonti, President of TIME Studios, stated, “On This Day… 1776 demonstrates TIME Studios’ growth as a hub for innovative creators—uniting Primordial Soup with TIME’s platforms to provide ambitious, historically accurate stories to a worldwide audience. This initiative offers a view into the potential of considerate, creative, artist-driven AI application—enhancing rather than replacing skill, and enabling storytellers to explore new frontiers.”

As the distribution partner, the Emmy Award-winning TIME Studios, which encompasses television, film, audio, and immersive media, combines Primordial Soup’s novel storytelling methods with TIME’s 100-year legacy of chronicling American history.

Darren Aronofsky served as executive producer for On This Day… 1776, with Lucas Sussman heading the writers room. The production features animation by artists using generative AI, voice acting by SAG members, a score by Jordan Dykstra, and post-production editing, mixing, and color grading. Primordial Soup produced the series with support from Salesforce. The team used Slack, a Salesforce product, to enhance collaboration among its international writers, designers, and AI experts. Google DeepMind also contributed AI technology. New episodes will debut weekly on TIME’s YouTube channel in 2026, scheduled to align with the anniversaries of the events they portray. Episodes can be found at

ABOUT PRIMORDIAL SOUP

Primordial Soup is an AI studio established by acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. The studio combines daring narratives, profound emotion, and innovative processes to create original stories and the necessary tools. It seeks out and partners with top AI artists and storytellers worldwide, offering them cutting-edge technology to hone their skills and realize previously inconceivable stories.

ABOUT TIME STUDIOS

TIME Studios, part of a globally recognized brand, is an Emmy Award®-winning studio for television and film, and an acclaimed producer of immersive and branded content. It concentrates on creating, producing, and distributing high-quality unscripted and scripted narratives that inspire change. Leveraging a 102-year history of technical innovation and a distinctive visual style, TIME Studios strives to influence communities and the global landscape with ideas that drive genuine advancement. By uniting top creators with the trusted TIME brand, which engages over 120 million people worldwide, TIME Studios is exceptionally equipped to attract vast audiences to the planet’s most compelling stories.

ABOUT SALESFORCE

Salesforce assists organizations of all scales in becoming agentic enterprises by uniting people, agents, applications, and data on a reliable, integrated platform to achieve exceptional growth and innovation.

ABOUT GOOGLE DEEPMIND

Google DeepMind is a premier global AI research laboratory dedicated to the responsible development of AI, achieving scientific milestones, and creating tools that enhance lives worldwide. Its significant achievements include AlphaFold, an AI system for predicting protein structures; Gemini, a suite of adaptable AI models that interpret and combine text, code, images, audio, and video; and generative media models and tools like Veo, Nano Banana, and Lyria.

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