Less than two weeks after Amazon MGM Studios dropped Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman biopic “Artificial,” Neon is officially closing in on the OpenAI feature for theatrical distribution, TheWrap has learned.
The nearly finished film, starring Andrew Garfield as the AI tech mogul, was shopped to studios after Amazon declined to release it, with would-be suitors like Netflix and Focus Features soon dropping out of the race. Amazon developed the $40 million drama by the “Challengers” and “Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker, and decided to drop it months after the company made a $50 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a cloud computing partnership.
Guadagnino commented for the first time on Amazon’s decision on Friday, sharing that he “can’t say too much because we are right in the middle of this situation,” but that central to the “Artificial” story is what he called the tech oligarchy’s “truly radical control” of “the very identity of places like the United States and the entire world.”
“What matters most to me is how people are completely changing the face of things — not just society in terms of consumption and how we interact with these tools, but the very identity of places like the United States and the entire world,” Guadagnino said. (TheWrap transcribed the Italian interview to English using Google Translate.) “And that is indeed what is happening. Indeed, this small oligarchy — which nonetheless exercises truly radical control — [is central to the story].”
The news that Amazon MGM was uncommitting to releasing the project came on June 19, with speculation brewing that the company’s OpenAI ties contributed to the decision.
“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,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “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.”
This decision sparked conversation over the potential conflicting interests between tech firms and their entertainment development branches, with Amazon’s commitment to OpenAI coming at odds with the film’s content. The final version of “Artificial” took on a darker tone than the initial script, according to Puck, with Altman’s character comes off looking the worst.
This will be Neon’s first collaboration with Guadagnino, whose previous films have landed at studios like Amazon MGM and A24.
This news was first reported by Puck’s Matt Belloni.
