Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman Movie ‘Artificial’ Circled by Neon After Being Dropped by Amazon MGM — Report

Neon is reportedly circling a deal to acquire the U.S. rights to “Artificial,” the new film from director Luca Guadagnino that tells the story of OpenAI founder Sam Altman. Puck co-founder and reporter Matt Belloni first reported the news.

Sources either did not respond to IndieWire’s request for comment as of writing or declined to comment.

The nearly completed film stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and had long been set up at Amazon MGM Studios for a planned release in early 2027. But last week, the film was dropped by the studio in the wake of Amazon setting a major deal with Altman’s OpenAI for the AI company to use Amazon Web Services cloud functionality in a $50 billion deal.

The film’s reps at CAA Media Finance have since held screenings with major buyers, including Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.’ Clockwork label, all of whom passed.

“Artificial” was written by “SNL” writer Simon Rich and follows a fictionalized version of the period of turmoil at OpenAI in which, in 2023, Altman was fired and removed by the board of directors at the company in a move orchestrated by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever (“Anora” star Yura Borisov), only for him to return as CEO. The film also stars Monica Barbaro as OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati, Mark Rylance as AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk.

While the film has been compared to “The Social Network,” itself not exactly a flattering portrait of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Puck and Matt Belloni on “The Town” podcast described “Artificial” as particularly unflattering to Altman and to Musk, particularly in how the use of AI has the potential to warp culture, if not end the world.

Belloni reported that Amazon seemed to think the movie turned out darker than expected, and he spoke to one buyer who saw the movie and described it by saying, “It’s grim, it’s dark, it goes there, and it makes you feel bad after watching it about the future of the human race.”

Amazon MGM, upon dropping the film, said in a statement to the press, “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.”

Amazon MGM has released two of Guadagnino’s prior films, including “Challengers,” which made $96 million globally at the box office and is Guadagnino’s biggest hit, and last year’s “After the Hunt,” which also starred Garfield and made just $9.4 million without generating any awards buzz.

More to come…