Months after Amazon announced plans to invest billions in OpenAI, the e-commerce giant’s film studio has now dropped an upcoming movie about the AI company. Amazon MGM has decided not to release Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming movie starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. Puck reports that the nearly finished movie was initially expected to be released later this year, but is now being shopped around to other studios. “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 spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement. “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.”
Guadagnino is known for stylish, buzzy films including Call Me by Your Name, Queer, and Challengers. Now, the Italian director is taking on Silicon Valley. Artificial is being described as a comedic drama about the world of artificial intelligence.
The film centers around the time Altman was suddenly fired from the company in 2023, only to be rehired four days later. Altman was initially ousted by the company’s board for allegedly not being “consistently candid in his communication with the board.” The New York Times reported at the time that Altman had tried to remove one of the directors, Helen Toner, because he thought she had been critical of OpenAI’s safety practices in a research paper she co-authored, while praising rival firm Anthropic.
