In short
- Amazon has released Sam Altman’s “Artificial” movie that is almost out of its original release date and is now buying it from other retailers.
- The film, which stars Andrew Garfield, is said to portray Altman in an irreverent manner, and Amazon’s decision comes following a $50 billion investment in the AI giant.
- CAA is now pitching the film to potential distributors, according to a report.
Amazon abruptly canceled “Artificial,” its blockbuster film about Sam Altman’s ouster in 2023 as CEO of OpenAI, pulling the near-completed project from its release calendar and shopping it to rival studios instead.
The studio confirmed the decision in a media release Park late Thursday, a move made by Mike Hopkins, who oversees Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. Hopkins told director Luca Guadagnino (“The Critics,” “Call Me By Your Name”) and the production team that Amazon would not move forward with the planned release.
“We have great respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning artist, not to mention a long-standing relationship that we hope to continue,” an Amazon spokesperson told the newspaper. “We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it is released by another studio and we are working closely with the production team to find the film a new home.”
The film, written by Simon Rich, stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and Yura Borisov as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, in the story drawing compared to Facebook launched the drama, “The Social Network.” Park says the original script portrays Altman in an extreme light, portraying him as power-hungry and manipulative; in one instance, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton called Altman “one of the smartest people on the planet.”
An insider at Amazon said the film’s tone had grown beyond the original tone, prompting Hopkins to halt production after seeing a cut.
The change comes a few months after Amazon threw $50 billion into OpenAIand as Altman developed close ties with the Trump administration—a relationship Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos also wanted to maintain. Creative Artists Agency is now looking for the film to potential new distributors.
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