Watch the Ads That The Brutalist Director Brady Corbet Made to Get Paid

The Brutalist director Brady Corbet has made his advertising directorial debut with a trio of ads for Bloomberg Media.

Fresh off his post-war epic, The Brutalist, winning three Oscars, Corbet directed “The Contextualist,” the latest installment of Bloomberg Media’s “Context Changes Everything” campaign created by agency Wieden+Kennedy New York. 

Corbet recently revealed on the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast that he didn’t make money from directing The Brutalist, despite the movie sweeping awards shows, but that he did get paid for directing three ads in Portugal.

“It’s the first time that I had made any money, really, in years,” he told Maron on the Feb. 17 episode. 

That advertising job appears to have been for Bloomberg. The three spots—titled “The Price of Tea in China,” “Bird in the Hand,” and “Rising Tides—unpack common idioms through the lens of international business stories to showcase Bloomberg’s global journalism.

The films will run across CTV placements on Disney, Amazon, and YouTube in the U.S., U.K., and Singapore. The campaign will also comprise digital out-of-home ads in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Atlanta, audio spots on Amazon and Spotify, and social media activity. 

“I’m proud of this work for Bloomberg and how it addresses the importance of context in today’s information landscape,” Corbet said in a statement. “With the volume and speed of information in every news cycle, it’s more important than ever to connect the dots and dig deeper. I’m excited for audiences to see how we’ve brought this campaign to life.” 

“The Contextualist” progresses the brand by personifying ideas of “intellect, curiosity, and ambition,” according to Julia Beizer, chief operating officer of Bloomberg Media.

Since launching “Context Changes Everything” in September 2023, the campaign has helped Bloomberg gain more than 100,000 active subscribers, she added. The company now has a total of 630,000 subscribers globally. 

“‘Context Changes Everything’ has become an important rallying point with consumers to remind them what’s unique about Bloomberg as we continue to double down on global news coverage for them,” Beizer said in a statement. “It remains an important driving element of our investment to continue growing and engaging subscribers in the years to come.”