Artificial, a nearly completed film by Luca Guadadgino (Challengers, Queer, Call Me By Your Name) portraying OpenAI CEO Sam Altman "in a negative light," has been reportedly dropped by Amazon MGM Studios in a sudden turn of events, Puck News reports. The film — which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman — is the highly anticipated upcoming project from Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story breakout star and Out100 honoree Cooper Koch.
"We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue," an Amazon representative told reporter Matthew Belloni, who broke the news on Puck News. "We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home."
Belloni's report noted that Amazon "made headlines earlier this year by spending $75 million to make and market a fawning Melania Trump documentary" and was now seemingly "doing the opposite: Dumping a nearly finished film that paints a powerful tech figure and Trump ally in a negative light."
Artificial is described as focusing on a pivotal 2023 moment in Silicon Valley history: the brief, chaotic firing of Altman from OpenAI — the nonprofit-turned-tech-juggernaut he cofounded — and his swift reinstatement days later. In that sense, the film appears to be critical of Altman's leadership, depicting his gradual rerouting of a mission-driven organization toward commercial ambition and personal enrichment.
Yura Borisov, a breakout star from the Palme d'Or-winning Anora, portrays Ilya Sutskever, the machine-learning pioneer and OpenAI cofounder. Besides Koch, Garfield, and Borisov, the cast also includes Monica Barbaro, Billie Lourd, Mark Rylance, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Hoffman, and Ike Barinholtz, per Deadline. Details of Koch's character have been kept under wraps.
Mike Hopkins, the head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, reportedly pulled the plug after seeing a cut of the finished film. Amazon confirmed it will now shop the movie to other distributors — despite, per Belloni, offering no explanation for why the film no longer fits its release slate.
In February, OpenAI and Amazon announced a partnership of $50 billion, highlighted by various publications as potentially playing a role in this sudden decision. Moreover, The Hollywood Reporter cited that "Altman and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos are reportedly friendly; the AI behemoth was among the high-profile guests at the latter's Venice wedding to Lauren Sanchez last year." Tonal parallels to Aaron Sorkin's 2010 film about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network, were also emphasized in several reports.
This story is still developing…
