[philomathdan]

Looks like you're right. From an article in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/jan/05/features):

"Aronofsky was inspired by such real-life pi-chasers as the Russian mathematician brothers Chudnovski who built a supercomputer in their own cramped Manhattan apartment and calculated pi to two billion digits. But most people don't look for patterns in pi, he says: 'You basically use it to test the speed of a supercomputer. The brothers called me a quack - they told me there's no pattern.'"