Indie distributor Neon has stepped in to rescue Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's unflinching drama about Sam Altman and the founding of OpenAI, after Amazon MGM Studios abruptly abandoned the nearly finished film earlier this month. The decision is widely seen as fallout from Amazon's new $50 billion (€46 billion) partnership with the AI company, announced in late February.
The film stars Andrew Garfield as Altman, with Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk. Written by Saturday Night Live alumnus Simon Rich, Artificial has been billed as The Social Network for the AI era, recounting the frantic 2023 weekend when Altman was fired by OpenAI's board and reinstated within days. It was shot in San Francisco and Italy, marking Guadagnino's third collaboration with Amazon MGM, following Challengers and After the Hunt.
A Deal Too Big to Ignore
Guadagnino broke his silence on the Italian talk show Otto e Mezzo, framing the saga as symptomatic of a larger issue. He argued that a small "tech oligarchy" now exercises "truly radical control" over the identity of "places like the United States and the entire world," pointing to the stark inequality he witnessed while filming in Silicon Valley's backyard, San Francisco.
The timing is critical. Amazon pulled the film just months after finalising an expansive partnership with OpenAI, structured in two tranches: $15 billion (€13 billion) paid immediately for Series C preferred stock, with a further $35 billion (€31 billion) tied to milestones including OpenAI reaching certain technical benchmarks or completing an initial public offering. The same deal expanded OpenAI's existing cloud agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to roughly $138 billion (€121 billion) and made AWS the exclusive third-party distributor for Frontier, OpenAI's enterprise platform. OpenAI also committed to running two gigawatts of workloads on Trainium, Amazon's in-house AI chip built as a cheaper alternative to Nvidia's GPUs.
Amazon said only that Artificial would "be better served if it were released by a different studio," praising Guadagnino as an "award-winning filmmaker" while insisting the film's subject matter and its unflattering depiction of Altman had nothing to do with the decision. Few in the industry are buying that framing.
Just How Unflattering Is It?
Test screenings reportedly went well — though not because audiences left liking the subjects. One insider who saw the film said Altman and Musk emerged as the least sympathetic characters, the ones viewers "would like least." A buyer who screened it told podcaster Matt Belloni it was "dark" and "grim," leaving audiences unsettled about humanity's future. Amazon itself is said to have concluded the finished film was darker than the script had suggested.
Once Amazon exited, the film became Hollywood's hottest hot potato. Netflix and Focus Features passed. A24 screened it but never confirmed interest — notably, the studio is backed by Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital, which holds a board seat at OpenAI and ranks among its largest investors, a reminder that Amazon is far from the only company with skin in the AI game. Warner Bros.' Clockwork label also stepped away, before Mubi and Neon emerged as the frontrunners.
What's Next
The rescue lands Guadagnino's film with a studio on an extraordinary run: Neon has backed the last seven consecutive Palme d'Or winners at Cannes, from Parasite in 2019 through this year's Fjord, and has twice ridden a Cannes winner all the way to the Best Picture Oscar, with Parasite and Anora. Neon says it will push Artificial into this year's awards race, with a festival premiere still to be confirmed.
The backdrop, meanwhile, keeps shifting. OpenAI has confidentially filed paperwork for a stock market listing that could value the company north of $850 billion (€745 billion) — among the largest technology IPOs ever attempted — with Amazon's remaining $35 billion (€31 billion) tranche reportedly contingent, in part, on that listing actually happening. For a film about who gets to control a transformative, disruptive technology, its own tortured path to the screen has proven remarkably on-theme.
This story also resonates in Europe, where Amazon's investments in AI and robotics are reshaping logistics, as seen in its €10 billion European bet on warehouses and automation. Meanwhile, OpenAI's expansion into the continent, including a new office in Madrid, highlights the growing influence of these tech giants on European soil. The film's exploration of power dynamics in the AI sector is a cautionary tale for policymakers in Brussels and beyond.
