The big news yesterday was Amazon/MGM abandoning Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial,” which tackles Sam Altman and his controversial rise to becoming OpenAI’s CEO.
Now, there has been speculation that Amazon—which announced plans to invest $50 billion in OpenAI this year and said in a statement on Friday that the film would “be better served if it were released by a different studio”—dropped the project for political reasons, although the company denies it.
According to The New York Times, Guadagnino was “shocked” by the decision, as Amazon had been supportive of the film up until that point. The film carries a $40 million budget. “Artificial” had already been test-screened in four cities, and a 2027 release date was reportedly being planned.
In fact, the film was supposed to have its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, which would have marked the first time Guadagnino—a Venice veteran—screened a film there.
Now, “Artificial” has been quickly screened for other potential distributors on Wednesday and Thursday, including Neon, A24, Focus Features, Netflix, and Warner Bros.’ Clockwork. No one has acquired it yet.
The New York Times linked to the test-screening report I posted about “Artificial,” which described it as “The Social Network for the AI era.” Reactions to the film were mixed, but test screenings are hardly gospel, and Guadagnino now has more time to tinker with the final cut.
The characters painted in the most negative light in “Artificial” are Altman (Andrew Garfield) and Elon Musk (Ike Barinholtz). The film’s first hour centers on Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov), the idealistic, slightly naïve scientific mind behind OpenAI, before a power struggle occurs and Altman ultimately prevails.
Where will “Artificial” screen next? I gather that if it still doesn’t have a distributor by the time the fall festival season rolls around, it will test the waters with a premiere at Venice or TIFF. The latter now has a market component, making it an ideal place to screen the film.
I should warn you: based on everything I’ve heard, this teaser is a total misdirection. The movie is not at all what it’s being portrayed as here. In fact, most of the footage in the teaser comes from the first few minutes of the film.