Yonatan Dor

Film crews, then an image generator

Before AI, Yonatan Dor made videos the conventional way, with film crews and large budgets^[2]. In early 2022 he came across an early AI image generator and was hooked: The New York Times reports that he spent eight to 12 hours a day making AI images, selling his services online^[2]. He told the journalist Damian Reilly that he came to AI video almost by accident, while trying to make 3D music videos^[9].

The studio's YouTube channel describes The Dor Brothers as an AI video production company founded by the Dor brothers in Berlin, Germany, and its first upload, The Dor Brothers AI Animation Trailer, went up on 24 July 2022^[3][34]. A DALL-E animated music video for Billingsley's Serenity followed that September, and in spring 2023 two videos whose titles claim firsts: the first music videos made with Runway's Gen-1 and Gen-2^[37][35][36]. Yonatan does the publicity; who the other brother or brothers are has never been made public, and The Spectator calls it a mystery^[8]. As the studio's own site puts it, the faces stay off-screen and the work takes the bows^[10].

Runways, then world leaders as outlaws

In June 2024 the studio started Rogue Runway, AI fashion shows that became an early signature; Rogue Runway: Genesis has 1.45 million YouTube views^[38]. That August came The Hustle, AI versions of world leaders robbing convenience stores, made with Grok and posted on X, where Know Your Meme counted one repost at more than 16 million views^[12]. A second part followed on YouTube within days^[39].

The format stuck: presidents, prime ministers and tech billionaires, all AI-generated, drinking, rioting and partying, cut hard to music and signed off "Directed by The Dor Brothers"^[5][6]. Lies Wide Shut, a masked-ball conspiracy satire, has 3.2 million views, and The Drill, released on 19 November 2024, is the studio's most watched upload at 17.6 million^[6][5]. None of it is real footage of the people shown: it is parody made with AI.

Academics noticed. In September 2024 James Hutson and Andrew Smith of Lindenwood University published a paper on the studio's AI satire, drawing on interviews with Yonatan, which describes early work that hid the models' flaws behind retro filters and treated AI's unpredictability as part of the style^[13]. Clients came too. The studio made the AI music video for Snoop Dogg, Dave East and WHOISTEVENYOUNG's Love You More that September, which it calls Snoop's first AI music video, and which Creative Bloq took apart in a critical review^[24][11][47]. The studio told The New York Times its revenue from commercial projects crossed $1 million in 2024^[2].

We need to adapt as a species to the technology.

Yonatan Dor^[2]

The face of the studio

By 2025 he was the one journalists called. The New York Times interviewed him from Lisbon for an August 2025 profile, describing him as the head of the studio and setting out its process: a concept first, then ChatGPT to write and help choose prompts, then a video generator such as Runway or Google's Veo 3^[2]. In September he told Damian Reilly, for The Spectator and Reilly's own newsletter, that the studio could make a sophisticated, slick AI film in a day or two, and that screen actors would soon be a thing of the past^[9][8]. Influenders, a satire of influencer culture set in a country at war, was among the films the Times described^[45][2]. Deadline profiled him that December under the headline "Feted By Joe Rogan, Collabing With Snoop Dogg"^[7].

MiniMax, the company behind Hailuo AI, hosted an evening with The Dor Brothers at RNA Studio in Lisbon in August 2025, with screenings and a live conversation^[25]. The studio launched its own awards, The Dor Awards, that September^[46], and in December released This is DORLABS, the launch video for its own AI tool^[40]. On AI LIVE, Chris Branch later compared Runway's Ad Conceptor to the grid tool in Dor Labs^[41].

Apex

In early February 2026 the studio released the trailer for Rorschach Killer, a stylised 1970s crime story, and AI LIVE noted that it had announced two multi-million dollar films for 2026 and was testing ideas with teasers first^[14][15]. On 16 February came Apex, which the studio billed as a $200,000,000 AI movie made in just one day^[4]. Made with Seedance 2.0, it follows a mother in a red leather coat racing across a New York under attack to reach her daughter, Sophia, by Cybertruck; threads online insisted the lead actress was real^[4][1]. The studio's site says Apex reached more than 20 million views in 48 hours across platforms^[10]. On YouTube alone it has 174,000^[4].

Three days later, on AI LIVE Ep. 109, Chris played Apex and messaged the studio to say the show was watching. Minutes later Yonatan was in the green room, sharing his screen: the character sheet for the heroine, the Premiere timeline, a run of alien shots that never made the cut, and a clip where Seedance had given her a third hand^[1]. Before he left he gave the show his numbers: 20 million views, about 3,000 emails, 32 movie deal offers and 25 top celebrities asking for films^[1].

It's not to brag about what we're doing but it's just to say this market is starting now.

Yonatan Dor^[1]

Nine days after Apex, the studio's 14-minute AI action film starring Logan Paul, who voiced himself, went up on Paul's channel as "We Made a $300,000,000 Movie in 7 Days Using AI"^[22][23]. The studio's work page lists it as Logan Paul: The Good Guy^[11].

Commissions, Cannes and Lisbon

Tool makers started commissioning the studio to show what their models could do. For Dreamina's Seedance 2.0 trailer in April 2026, it built a genre-hopping film in which an on-screen prompt box rewrites each scene; AI LIVE called it a great brief for any tool maker^[16][17]. A launch film for Dreamina's Octo agent followed in June, and a claymation-style story for Pippit in October^[29][32].

At the World AI Film Festival in Cannes in April 2026, a four-minute preview of Death Lane, a 20-minute road-trip horror film commissioned by MiniMax, played on the big screen; Chris Branch, in the audience, described gasps in the cinema^[18][43]. In Cannes Yonatan also met Marco Magario, and within three days had made him an offer; Marco joined the studio straight after the festival, and Yonatan's repost of his comedy HOLY GRAiL helped it take off^[19]. Chris spent several days with the studio in Lisbon afterwards, making music and talking AI^[20], and Karim Youssef has described the weekend at the Dor Brothers' house when the idea for his XPRIZE film Voyager 7 came up^[21].

The releases kept coming. The studio dropped its hustle-culture satire NORM 20 seconds before messaging Chris during a live AI LIVE show in May^[27]. In August AI LIVE showed two Dor Brothers pieces in one night, a gentle cats-and-dogs animation and Proxy, a fast social commentary on immigration, and Chris called it jaw-dropping that the same team made both^[30]. REVIVER, made by Aleksey within the studio, followed that month, and White Flag, a Paris picnic that ends in flames, on 22 October 2026^[31][44][42].