Several of the buyers who screened Luca Guadagnino’s hotly anticipated “Artificial” in the days after Amazon MGM Studios abruptly dropped the film have passed on acquiring it, sources tell Variety.
Focus Features, Warner Bros.’ Clockwork, A24 and Netflix have all stepped away, according to those sources. But the Sam Altman drama, which is nearly completed, isn’t without suitors. Variety has learned that Mubi is pursuing the film, with Neon also possibly circling.
CAA Media Finance, which represents Guadagnino, has been running screenings to find the film a new home since Amazon’s exit. The picture — a reported $40 million production starring Andrew Garfield as the OpenAI chief executive — was shown to a cluster of potential distributors in the last couple days. The picture is rumored to be portraying Altman as a pathological liar and Musk (Ike Barinholtz) as highly antipathetic.
Amazon MGM, which developed “Artificial” and had slated it for an early 2027 release, walked away from the project entirely — a decision that landed just months after the company announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a multi-year cloud partnership. Amazon has said it believes the film would be “better served” at another studio and that it is working with the filmmakers to find it a new home, while denying that the subject matter drove the decision.
