Due to Sam Altman and OpenAI, no one wants to distribute Artificial, the film by Luca Guadagnino about Sam Altman and OpenAI.

Amazon was supposed to distribute it, but changed its mind at the last moment. Warner Bros. and Paramount have already rejected it. And now, nothing is known about the film's fate.

Amazon has abandonedArtificial, the biographical film by Luca Guadagnino about Sam Altman. The official statement says that Amazon “believes the film would be more successful if distributed by another studio” and that it is working “closely with the crew to find a new home.” The reason is written in the numbers: Amazon has invested $15 billion in OpenAI, with another $35 billion expected in the coming months, plus a $38 billion cloud computing deal signed last year. Jeff Bezos is a personal friend of Altman. The film, featuring Andrew Garfield as Altman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, reportedly does not offer a flattering portrait of the mogul. Amazon could therefore not distribute a film that tears apart the CEO of the company in which it has just invested $50 billion, but “we have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino,” Amazon added in the statement.

The screenplay is by Simon Rich and focuses on the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in November 2023, one of the most surreal episodes in recent Silicon Valley history. According to Page Six, the real protagonist of the story is not Altman but Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder of OpenAI who in 2023 was among the board members who ousted Altman from the CEO position, only to resign after Altman’s return, which occurred just seven days after his ousting. Sutskever is played by Yura Borisov (he was the handsome and talented Russian guy from Anora), who in the film represents the “talking cricket” of the contemporary tech industry, while Altman is the embodiment of an opposing power, becoming increasingly imposing and overbearing. Filming wrapped last fall and the film aimed for a release during the Christmas period, also to be eligible for Oscar nominations, and especially to “challenge” the competition from The Social Reckoningby Aaron Sorkin (the sequel toThe Social Network with Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg), which has the same ambitions and will be released around the same time.

Before Amazon, the production path of Artificialhad already been bumpy. As reported by the Guardian, last year Puck had reported that both Warner Bros. and Paramount had rejected Rich’s screenplay because they found it “boring”, although sources close to the production deny that it had been pitched around, claiming that Amazon had acquired it already in the development phase. Now that Amazon has pulled back, the film must find a distributor willing to release a non-flattering portrait of Sam Altman at a time when almost every major film studio has already struck some kind of deal with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, or one of the other leading companies in the AI industry.