Amazon MGM Studios just backed out of releasing Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s movie about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
According to Deadline, the studio confirmed it will no longer distribute the nearly finished film, even though it had been in the works for roughly a year and had already screened well in early test audiences.
What Artificial is actually about, and why Amazon dropped it?
Artificial is billed as a comedic drama covering the chaotic five days in 2023 when Altman was abruptly fired by OpenAI’s board. That apparently traced back to Altman trying to push out board member Helen Toner after she praised rival Anthropic Claude‘s safety practices over OpenAI’s own.
Microsoft swooped in with a job offer almost instantly, and most of OpenAI’s staff threatened to quit in response. Four days later, Altman was back as CEO, with a big chunk of the board replaced. The movie cast includes Andrew Garfield stars as Altman, with Monica Barbaro playing former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and Ike Barinholtz taking on Elon Musk.
Amazon told Deadline it has enormous respect for Guadagnino (who made movies like the Challengers) and hopes to keep working with him, but believes Artificial would be better served by a different studio. Other reports also suggest that the movie leans darker than Amazon initially expected, with both Altman and Musk’s characters coming across as the least sympathetic figures on screen.
Why the timing feels less than coincidental?
Amazon and OpenAI share a deep financial relationship, with Amazon announcing a $50 billion investment in the AI company earlier this year, including AWS becoming OpenAI’s exclusive cloud partner.
Altman and Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos also reportedly share a personal friendship, with Altman attending Bezos’s wedding last year. Whether either relationship influenced Amazon’s decision remains unconfirmed, but the optics are hard to ignore.
Other studios are now being shown the film as talks continue about where it might land next. For now, Artificial is a movie without a home, caught in the middle of the very tech politics it was made to dramatize.