Amazon MGM Studios will not release “Artificial,” the film built around the 2023 turmoil at OpenAI, and has told the filmmakers it wants to help find another distributor. Production has already wrapped.
Luca Guadagnino directed the picture from a script by Simon Rich. It centres on November 2023, when Sam Altman was removed as OpenAI chief executive and then reinstated less than a week later. Andrew Garfield plays Altman. Monica Barbaro is Mira Murati, the company’s former chief technology officer, and Yura Borisov plays co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Ike Barinholtz appears as Elon Musk.
The story reportedly gives heavy attention to Sutskever, who sat on the board that ousted Altman and left it after his return.
What Amazon said
In a statement, Amazon said it has great respect for Guadagnino and hopes to keep working with him. It said it believes “Artificial” would be better served by another studio, and that it is working closely with the production team on a new home.
It gave no specific reason for stepping away.
The decision came months after Amazon and OpenAI widened their business ties through a major investment and a cloud computing partnership, a deal reported at $50 billion. Whether the two events are connected is not something the company has addressed.
The rest of the cast includes Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Rylance. The filmmakers are now looking for a distributor ahead of the planned release.
