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Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s controversial Sam Altman biopic, which is poised for an awards run next year, has been dropped by its distributor, Amazon.
In a statement first reported by Puck, Amazon said that it believes “that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the film-making team to find the film a new home”.
Amazon’s decision to leave the project comes in the wake of a significant partnership struck between Amazon and OpenAI, of which Altman is CEO. The deal will see Amazon – whose owner, Jeff Bezos, is friends with Altman – immediately invest $15bn in the company, “followed by another $35bn in the coming months when certain conditions are met,” according to the artificial intelligence company’s website. This follows a $38bn cloud computing deal signed by the two companies last year.
It is believed that the film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, is not a flattering portrayal of the tech mogul.
“We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning film-maker – not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” added Amazon.
The film, which is scripted by award-winning comedy writer Simon Rich, wrapped shooting last autumn and is said to focus on the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in 2023.
Page Six reported last month that the hero of Rich’s story is OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, played by Anora star Yura Borisov. In 2023, Sutskever was one of the board members who ousted Altman as CEO; after Altman reinstatement a week later, Sutskever stepped down from the board.
The film had been circling a wide release in early 2027, after an awards qualifying run in the US over Christmas, to avoid competition from Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning. A followup to David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), which starred Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, that film recasts Jeremy Strong as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The Social Reckoning also features an Anora star as the victim of questionable actions by a tech billionaire; it stars Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen, who was involved in the 2021 Facebook leak.
Also starring in Artificial are Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Rylance.
Last year Puck reported that Warner Bros and Paramount had both passed on Rich’s script over concerns it was “dull”, as well as citing sources who deny the script was shopped around and claim it was bought by Amazon at script stage.
Guadagnino’s most recent film, After the Hunt, starred Garfield as an academic accused of sexual assault. His other credits include Challengers, Call Me By Your Name, Queer and A Bigger Splash.
Rich’s novellas and short story collections have earned him considerable acclaim and a strong fanbase. His movie credits include story work on Inside Out, Wonka and A Minecraft Movie, as well as the script for 2020 Seth Rogen film, An American Pickle –an adaptation of Rich’s New Yorker story Sell Out.
