Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s film on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been dropped by Amazon.
Amazon drops Artificial
Amazon MGM Studios announced on Friday that they were backing out from producing the film, adding that they were ‘closely working’ with the film’s team to find it ‘a new home’.
Variety quoted a spokesperson for Amazon as saying, “We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker, not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue. We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”
The filmmaker has not commented on the matter so far.
Amazon and OpenAI’s new partnership
Many industry insiders have questioned the timing of Amazon washing their hands of the film. The move comes notably after Amazon, the studio’s parent company, struck a massive partnership with the tech company in February to expand OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services and develop custom AI models. This included a massive $50 billion investment by Amazon.
All about Artificial
Artificial chronicles Altman’s journey as a tech entrepreneur and focuses on the brief period Altman was fired from his position at OpenAI in 2023 and then rehired. The company is best known for creating ChatGPT, the globally popular MLM.
Besides Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Artificial boasts a huge cast including Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk. Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Rylance also feature. The film was written by Saturday Night Live alum Simon Rich.
