Luca Guadagnino and Andrew Garfield have been working on their new movie Artificial for a while now—to the point that outlets like Variety have been calling the film, a reportedly “unsympathetic” biopic of OpenAI founder Sam Altman, “nearly finished,” with an eye on a 2027 release. Which is going to make things a little awkward in a couple of months, since the movie’s distributor, Amazon MGM, has just announced that it’s dropping the film entirely from its schedule, and is trying to shop it to someone (possibly anyone) else.
It is, admittedly, about as sheepish an announcement like this as we’ve ever seen: Amazon sounds genuinely chagrined to report that “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio,” filling their comments with praise for Oscar nominess Guadagnino, and expressing their desire for “a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue.” Claims that Amazon MGM is “working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home” do run slightly counter to The New York Times reporting that the Artificial team was “shocked” by this week’s decision, but the pretty clear sentiment is “Please don’t be mad at our poor little multi-national retail juggernaut just because it’s starkly illustrating the conflict between creative art and corporate self-interest in the most blatant way possible.”
Because while Amazon’s statement didn’t give a reason Artificial would be “better served” by getting dumped by a studio that previously poured $40 million into it, online observers have been quick to make up the gap: Nobody has missed that the move comes just a few months after Amazon announced it was entering a new strategic partnership with Altman’s OpenAI, to the tune of a $50 billion investment in the company, and promises for Altman’s outfit to use some of Amazon’s hardware. Guadagnino was reportedly informed about the news of the movie getting dropped on Tuesday, and has already apparently screened the film—which stars Garfield as Altman, with Ike Barinholtz reportedly playing Elon Musk—for representatives from several other studios.
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