Luca Guadagnino is directing “Artificial,” an ambitious $40M drama being described as “The Social Network” for the AI generation. Set against the backdrop of OpenAI’s meteoric rise, the film is expected to chronicle the personal rivalries, ego clashes, and ethical tensions behind the most consequential tech revolution of our time.
According to Puck’s Matt Belloni, the project, written by Simon Rich (“An American Pickle”), has bounced around Hollywood for months. His sources say the script was passed on by major studios, including Warner Bros. and Paramount, with some execs calling it “dull.” That’s not exactly the buzz one hopes for when making a prestige tech drama.
Then there’s Elon Musk, depicted in “Artificial” as both comic relief and corporate villain. The early OpenAI backer reportedly appears in a handful of scenes, fretting more about his malfunctioning driverless Tesla than the existential threat of runaway AI. After a failed attempt to merge OpenAI into Tesla, he pulls his funding and mostly vanishes from the story.
Despite the skepticism, the film found its champion in Courtenay Valenti, the head of Amazon/MGM Studios, who landed the project with producer David Heyman attached. Valenti’s bet on Guadagnino may pay off—after all, this is a director known for turning intimate material into cultural conversation starters. Still, he’s never tackled a subject quite this contemporary, or potentially incendiary.
Guadagnino’s last two films (“Challengers” and “Queer”) had been written by a rising talent, Justin Kuritzkes, but he’s opted to go this time with an unproven scribe. Rich, a former staff writer for SNL in his early 20s, wrote “An American Pickle,” a quirky time-travel comedy starring Seth Rogen, and “Man Seeking Woman,” the surrealist FXX series he created. While undeniably clever and imaginative, Rich’s work has sometimes been seen as too stylized or slight for major studio tentpoles, which may explain the hesitation around his script for “Artificial. “
Another key detail from Belloni’s report: “Artificial” is centered on Ilya Sutskever, the idealistic and somewhat naive Israeli machine learning engineer who co-founded OpenAI. He’ll be portrayed by “Anora” breakout Yura Borisov, with Andrew Garfield set to star opposite him as the film’s co-lead.
Rehearsals are set to begin next week in Italy, with a release planned for 2026.
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