Amazon dropped Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman film after announcing its OpenAI| film

Luca Guadagnino’s controversial Sam Altman biopic, Artificial, which is set to take home awards next year, has been dropped by its distributor, Amazon.

In a statement first reported by Puck, Amazon said it believes “Artificial will be better served if released by a different studio, and is working closely with the film’s making team to find a new home for the film.”

Amazon’s decision to leave the project follows an important partnership between Amazon and OpenAI, of which Altman serves as CEO. Under the deal, Amazon – whose owner is Altman’s friend Jeff Bezos – will make an immediate investment of $15 billion in the company, “followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met,” according to the AI ​​company’s website. This comes after the $38 billion cloud computing deal the two companies signed last year.

The film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, is believed to be a not-so-flattering portrayal of the tech mogul.

“We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker, not to mention a long-standing relationship that we hope will continue,” Amazon added.

The film, written by award-winning comedy writer Simon Rich, wrapped filming last fall and is said to focus on Altman’s dramatic firing and rehiring in 2023.

Page Six reported last month that the hero of Rich’s story is OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, played by Anora star Yura Borisov. In 2023, Sutskever was one of the board members who ousted Altman as CEO. After Altman was reinstated a week later, Sutskever stepped down from the board.

The film had been eyeing a wide release in early 2027, after an awards qualifying round in the US over Christmas, to avoid competition from Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning. A follow-up to David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), which starred Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, this film recasts Jeremy Strong as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

The Social Reckoning also stars Anora as a victim of questionable actions by a tech billionaire; It stars Mickey Madison as whistleblower Francis Hogan, who was involved in the 2021 Facebook leak.

Artificial also stars Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Rylance.

Last year, Bock reported that Warner Bros and Paramount had passed on Rich’s script over concerns that it was “boring”, as well as citing sources who denied that the script had been marketed and claimed that Amazon had bought it at the script stage.

Guadagnino’s most recent film, After the Hunt, starred Garfield as an academic accused of sexual assault. His other credits include The Challengers, Call Me By Your Name, Weirdo and Bigger Splash.

Rich’s short novels and short story collections have earned him great fame and a strong fan base. His film credits include story work on Inside Out, Wonka, and A Minecraft Movie, as well as the screenplay for the 2020 Seth Rogen film, An American Pickle – an adaptation of Rich’s New Yorker story Sell Out.