DIRECTOR | WRITER | THINKER
PERCOLATE STUDIOS + THE NEXUS PROJECT PRESENT
A DOCUMENTARY BY WRITER & DIRECTOR, ROBERT ORLANDO
IN THEATERS WINTER 2026
Many in today's culture have been duped by Marxist theories. The result is a growing flirtation with socialism.
About the film: To Hell With Karl Marx
Why Karl Marx? Why now? The attraction isn’t his theories on economics, class warfare, or even his attacks on Capitalism. According to author-filmmaker Robert Orlando, Marxism provides an alternative religion to Christianity. However, when the forces of God meets the State, the world moves toward a final confrontation. For now, alienation is not resolved with faith and hope for the better in light of suffering. Instead, it is rooted deeply in the sins of envy, resentment, and acts of revenge against enemies. We've made political enemies our new devil, replacing the real one.
To Hell With Karl Marx
Did you know Karl Marx based his seminal economic thesis Das Capital on Dante's dark and disturbing Inferno? Filmmaker Robert Orlando exposes the horrors of Marx in his new book (and soon-to-be film) To Hell with Karl Marx: The American Exorcism. The book, scheduled for release in 2021, is Orlando's vision of his confrontation with Marx. Like Dante's work, it is a journey through hell.
To Hell with Karl Marx, a semi-autobiographical tale, was conceived in a dream and born of Orlando's lifelong passion for laying bare the dark underworld of Marxism. It is the filmmaker's deepest dive yet into the dark chambers of the Cold War. Orlando skillfully shines a klieg light on a radicalized worldview, the people it exploits, and the dark forces who promote its advancement in the modern world.
Marxist theories have duped many in today's culture. The result is a growing flirtation with communism. To Hell with Karl Marx is the hard shake American society needs right now. It is a severe warning NOT to make the mistake of dismissing Marx as some demonized figure, but rather to confront his utopian philosophy based on blame, which has deceived and murdered millions.
It is Orlando's last stand against Marx's wicked and beguiling death-of-the-West fairytale.
“I’m not sure whether it was the book I read,
my dream one night, or part of my creative vision,
but I knew I had to confront him,
I had to confront Karl Marx, in Hell.”
— DIRECTOR ROBERT ORLANDO
THE BOOK: NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON - TOP 10 PHILOSOPHER BIOGRAPHIES
AN UNFORGETTABLE DESCENT INTO THE ABYSS OF MARX'S LIFE AND THOUGHT
Karl Marx: The Divine Tragedy reveals Marx not merely as a revolutionary thinker, but as a flawed prophet consumed by his own radical vision. Tracing his descent through the lens of Dante's Divine Comedy, Robert Orlando portrays a man trapped by his ambitions, whose relentless pursuit of revolution led him into a self-made Hell.
At its heart lies a profound spiritual reckoning. With his devoted wife, Jenny von Westphalen, by his side, Marx pushed through years of exile, poverty, and isolation as the demons of his ideals slowly overtook his family.
Set against 19th-century Europe's revolution and upheaval, Orlando's landmark account blends history, philosophy, and spiritual reflection into an epic narrative—resurrecting Marx's journey and daring readers to confront the legacy of his ideas today.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Percolate Studios Signs Filmmaker Robert Orlando
to Multi-Picture Development Deal Through 2029
AI-accelerated studio partners with the award-winning director, bestselling biographer, and Wall Street Journal contributor to adapt his catalog of historical and faith-based IP — beginning with To Hell with Karl Marx
LOS ANGELES & PRINCETON, N.J. — June 2026 — Percolate Studios, the AI-accelerated media production company behind *The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience, today announced a multi-picture development partnership with writer-director Robert Orlando and his Princeton-based The Nexus Project. The long-term alliance extends through 2029 and centers on adapting Orlando's growing catalog of historical, political, cultural, and faith-based intellectual property into feature films produced through Percolate's proprietary AI pipeline, which compresses traditional development and visualization timelines from years into months.
The slate opens with To Hell with Karl Marx and continues with Washington's Cross and Apostle Paul: The Final Verdict — pairing Orlando's reputation for rigorous historical and theological storytelling with a production model built to render ambitious history at a fraction of a traditional studio's cost. Development begins in Summer 2026.
The deal marks one of the most ambitious applications yet of AI-accelerated filmmaking to the prestige history-and-faith category, a space that has historically demanded period budgets out of reach for independent producers.
The Slate
To Hell with Karl Marx, the first project under the partnership, adapts Orlando's 2026 biography Karl Marx: The Divine Tragedy, reframing the founding father of communism through the lens of Dante's Inferno — a vision-driven journey into the mind and the myths that still shape modern politics. The film is currently targeted for release on winter 2026.
Washington's Cross is Orlando's historical drama centered on George Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the desperate gamble at Trenton — a story of faith, leadership, and the founding fought over in the present day, set just miles from The Nexus Project's Princeton home.
Apostle Paul: Ektroma marks a return to one of Orlando's most enduring areas of scholarship — the life of the Apostle Paul and the rise of early Christianity. The long-anticipated culmination to his Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe (2013) follows Paul through his Roman trials to his fatal confrontation with Nero, the culmination of a journey "from faith to film" that established Orlando as a filmmaker-turned-historical-detective.
The Filmmaker and the Studio
The partnership marries Orlando's research — a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts and an M.T.S. and Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary — with Percolate's technical pipeline, joining creator-owned intellectual property with next-generation production technology.
Orlando's four-decade career spans feature films, documentaries, publishing, and education. His documentary work includes Silence Patton, Trump's Rosebud, The Shroud: Face to Face, and The Divine Plan: Reagan, John Paul II and the Dramatic End of the Cold War, which screened at both the White House and the Vatican. A bestselling biographer and Wall Street Journal contributor, he serves as Executive Director of Nexus Media and The Nexus Institute and has also written for American Thinker, The Catholic Thing, Daily Caller, HuffPost, and Townhall.
Pearson and Hull bring credits on more than 90 films between them — including The Passion of the Christ, Narnia, Rocky, Reagan, and The Shroud Immersive. Pearson's career began with album art for David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, and Aphex Twin and the launch of Blender Magazine, the first digital publication in the Smithsonian's permanent collection. Percolate's slate also includes an AI-animated children's film slated for theatrical release this year, underscoring the studio's range from immersive installations to original animation.
"Robert has spent three decades building something rare — a library of meaningful, creator-owned intellectual property with significant audiences already attached," said Jason Pearson, co-founder and CEO of Percolate Studios. "As AI transforms how stories get developed and produced, the creators who own valuable IP will define the next era of independent film. What we add is scale: the pipeline lets us put a period army on the Delaware or a Roman tribunal in front of Nero without a studio's balance sheet. For the first time, the ambition of these films can match the ambition of the ideas behind them."
"This partnership is about far more than technology," said Robert Orlando, writer-director and founder of The Project Nexus "I've turned down the easy version of these films before, because the budget always forced a compromise the subject couldn't survive. Jason understood that the technology is in service of the story, not the other way around. Percolate brings innovation and vision; The Nexus Project brings the stories, the research, and decades of development. Together we're building a slate designed not for a single release, but for years of storytelling."
"This is exactly the kind of work we built the studio to do," added Pearson. "Big, dangerous ideas — Marx, the Founding, Paul before Rome — made fast enough, and at a cost low enough, to actually reach an audience."
Production, Distribution, and Timeline
Development on the slate begins in Summer 2026 and continues through completion in 2029. Percolate and The Nexus Project are in discussions with distribution partners across theatrical, streaming, and faith-based exhibition channels, with additional project, financing, publishing, and distribution announcements expected throughout the partnership.
About Percolate Studios
Percolate Studios is an AI-accelerated media production company headquartered in Los Angeles, dedicated to developing film, television, publishing, and multimedia through the integration of emerging AI technologies and creator-driven storytelling. With more than 90 feature film credits across animation, drama, historical, educational, and immersive content, Percolate's recent work includes technology breakthrough projects The Shroud face-to-face and The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience, an AI-animated children's film slated for release this year, and content for The Wall Street Journal. Co-founded by entrepreneurs and media innovators Jason Pearson and Kris Hull, the company pioneers production pipelines that empower independent creators while expanding opportunities for global distribution. Learn more at PercolateStudios.com.
About Nexus Media
Nexus Media is an independent film and publishing company founded by filmmaker, author, and biographer Robert Orlando. For more than two decades, born of the subsidiary of Nexus Media has developed feature films, documentaries, books, educational content, and multimedia projects exploring history, politics, religion, culture, and biography. Its productions include Silence Patton, The Divine Plan, The Shroud: Face to Face, and numerous nationally distributed media properties. Learn more at NexusMediaSite.com and Robomantix.com.
Media Contacts:
Percolate Studios
Jason Pearson | Principal
Jason@PercolateStudios.com
949.212.7681
PercolateStudios.com
Nexus Media
Robert Orlando, President / Director
917-817-1514 · 609-430-8286
nexusmediasite.com · robomantix.com · robolando.substack.com
RobO
Robert Orlando, B.F.A. (School of Visual Arts), M.T.S., Th.M. (Princeton Theological), is an accomplished cultural theorist, award-winning author, filmmaker, and founder of Nexus Media Site. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies in the fields of science, academia, arts, and entertainment on messaging, branding, and multimedia communication. With expertise in film, religion, and key periods of ancient and modern history, he has written acclaimed biographies on the Apostle Paul, George S. Patton, Karl Marx, and George Washington, examining the intersection of historical narratives and modern cultural impact. He is the director of thought-provoking documentaries including Silence Patton, The Divine Plan, Trump’s Rosebud, and The Shroud: Face to Face, and the author of books such as The Divine Plan, The Tragedy of Patton, Citizen Trump: A One Man Show, and The Shroud: Face to Face—a top-rated title on Amazon. His upcoming works include Apostle Paul: A Man Out of Time (2027) and Karl Marx: The Divine Tragedy (Dec 2025), the latter to be adapted into the film Marx in Hell . He resides in Princeton, NJ.
