Where can Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie Artificial go now?
That’s the question that has been whirling around Hollywood since the news broke that Amazon MGM Studios was dropping the feature just months after Amazon entered into a $50 billion investment with Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
The choice was particularly interesting to Hollywood rank-and-file, which, in the era of M&A and private equity investments, is contending with more than a few minefields. This situation is not without its comps (albeit not exact). The Donald Trump movie, The Apprentice, had a difficult time selling out of the Cannes Film Festival. Before that, Warner Bros. unloaded several nearly finished films for tax purposes. We are in an era where completed movies are more easily tossed away than ever before.
The film is now being shopped to other distributors by CAA Media Finance, with many of the major studios already bowing out of the race. And while it is easy to get conspiratorial with a situation like this — especially at a time when tech companies command an outsized presence not just in entertainment but in our lives and whole corporations seem to serve at the pleasure of the President — it is also worthwhile to look at Artificial within the larger context of the entertainment industry.
