TIME Studios Partners with Primordial Soup to Distribute ‘ON THIS DAY… 1776’

PRIMORDIAL SOUP ANNOUNCES ‘ON THIS DAY… 1776’

Episodes One and Two Now Available for Streaming via TIME’s YouTube Channel

Primordial Soup, the new AI Studio founded by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, today announced On This Day… 1776, a new animated series that brings pivotal moments from America’s founding year to life, to be released by TIME Studios across TIME’s YouTube platform throughout 2026. The short-form series uses a combination of traditional filmmaking tools and emerging AI capabilities to tell short narrative stories about the Revolutionary War.

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Each episode recreates scenes and moments from 1776 on their 250th anniversaries—reframing the Revolution not as a foregone conclusion but as a fragile experiment shaped by those who fought for it. Grounded in historical records, the series is animated by artists using a variety of generative AI tools, voiced by SAG actors, with an original score; and edited, mixed, and color graded by our post-production team.

The first two episodes set the stage for a year-long journey through 1776. In episode one, “January 1: The Flag,” the series launches by dramatizing the moment when the Grand Union Flag was raised on Prospect Hill—250 years to the month after it happened. Episode two, “January 10: Common Sense,” follows Thomas Paine’s arrival from England, where Benjamin Franklin encourages him to write what others hesitate to say, resulting in a pamphlet that sends ripples through the colonies and across the Atlantic.

“On This Day… 1776 exemplifies how TIME Studios is evolving as a distribution home for visionary creators—bringing Primordial Soup together with TIME’s platforms to deliver ambitious, historically grounded storytelling at global scale,” said Ben Bitonti, President of TIME Studios. “This project is a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like—not replacing craft, but expanding what’s possible and allowing storytellers to go places they simply couldn’t before”.

TIME Studios, the Emmy Award-winning television, film, audio and immersive division of TIME, serves as distribution partner for the series, bringing together Primordial Soup’s innovative approach to storytelling with TIME’s century-long tradition of documenting American history.

On This Day… 1776 was executive produced by Darren Aronofsky. The writers room is led by Lucas Sussman. The series is animated by artists using generative AI tools, voiced by SAG actors, scored by Jordan Dykstra, and edited, mixed, and color graded by the post-production team. It is produced by Primordial Soup and made possible through the support of Salesforce. The production utilized Slack, a Salesforce company, to streamline real-time collaboration between its global team of writers, designers, and AI specialists. The series was made in part with AI from Google DeepMind. Episodes will be released weekly on TIME’s YouTube channel throughout 2026, with each installment timed to the anniversary of the historical event it depicts. New episodes will be available at https://www.youtube.com/time

ABOUT PRIMORDIAL SOUP

Primordial Soup is an AI studio founded by visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. Merging bold narrative, emotional depth, and experimental workflows, the studio develops original stories and the tools to tell them. Primordial Soup continues to identify and collaborate with the world’s leading AI artists and storytellers, providing them access to the latest advances in technology while helping them refine their craft and bring to life stories that were once unimaginable.

ABOUT TIME STUDIOS

From one of the most globally iconic brands, TIME Studios is an Emmy Award®-winning television and film studio as well as an award-winning immersive and branded content studio, focused on the development, production, and distribution of premium unscripted and scripted storytelling that moves the world. With technical innovation and a brand defining visual language that dates back 102 years, TIME Studios aims to impact communities and the world at large with ideas that forge true progress. Combining the industry’s leading creators with TIME, one of the most trusted brands that reaches an audience of over 120 million people globally, TIME Studios is uniquely positioned to bring massive audiences to the world’s most impactful stories

ABOUT SALESFORCE

Salesforce helps organizations of any size become agentic enterprises – integrating humans, agents, apps, and data on a trusted, unified platform to unlock unprecedented growth and innovation.

ABOUT GOOGLE DEEPMIND

Google DeepMind is a world-leading AI research lab, committed to building AI responsibly, delivering scientific breakthroughs, and developing tools that improve billions of lives. The unit’s breakthroughs over the last decade include AlphaFold – an AI model that can accurately predict the structure of proteins; Gemini, a family of versatile AI models capable of seamlessly combining and understanding text, code, images, audio and video; and generative media models and tools, including Veo, Nano Banana and Lyria.

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