TL;DRAmazon dropped Artificial, its nearly finished film about Altman’s 2023 OpenAI firing, four months after investing $50B in OpenAI. Other studios are circling.
Amazon MGM Studios has dropped Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s nearly finished film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Variety and Deadline reported on Thursday. The film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman, had tested well with early audiences and was being shown to other studios the same day Amazon confirmed it would not release it.
The decision comes four months after Amazon committed $50 billion to OpenAI as part of a $110 billion funding round, a deal that also made AWS the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI’s enterprise platform. Amazon has not said whether its financial relationship with OpenAI influenced the decision, but the timing has drawn widespread attention from trade outlets and tech press alike.
“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 Variety. “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.”
