Amazon Dropped a Film About Sam Altman After Its $50 Billion OpenAI Deal. Neon Just Picked It Up.
Luca Guadagnino's film about the 2023 OpenAI boardroom meltdown was dropped by Amazon after its $50 billion OpenAI deal. Neon just picked it up for awards season. Here's the full story behind one of Hollywood's stranger distribution sagas.
Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial" — a nearly finished $40 million film about the 2023 OpenAI boardroom meltdown that briefly ousted Sam Altman — just found a new distributor after one of the stranger corporate maneuvers in recent Hollywood history. Neon acquired worldwide rights to the film yesterday and confirmed it will target this year's Oscar race.
The backstory is worth knowing, because the distribution saga is almost as interesting as whatever the film itself turns out to be.
What happened with Amazon
"Artificial" was set up at Amazon MGM Studios, where Guadagnino had a working relationship after "Challengers" and "After the Hunt." It was nearly complete and had been eyeing a festival debut. Then, earlier in June, Amazon quietly announced it would no longer be releasing the film, saying it believed the movie would be "better served if it were released by a different studio."
The timing was not subtle: Amazon had announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI just months earlier. The finished film, per multiple industry sources, turned out considerably darker than the original script suggested — and Altman is not among those who come out looking sympathetic. As one buyer who screened it put it, the film is "grim, dark, goes there, and makes you feel bad after watching it about the future of the human race."
Guadagnino was described as "shocked" by Amazon's decision, as the studio had been supportive throughout production.
Who passed, and who didn't
After Amazon exited, CAA Media Finance ran screenings for major buyers. Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.' Clockwork label all passed. A24's decision is worth noting specifically: the studio is backed by Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital, which holds a board seat at OpenAI and is among its largest investors — a reminder that Amazon is far from the only major player with financial ties to the AI sector.
Neon stepped in where others wouldn't, acquiring worldwide rights in a deal negotiated by CAA Media Finance and Amazon MGM Studios. Neon confirmed the film will compete in this year's Oscar race. Neon has backed the last seven consecutive Palme d'Or winners at Cannes, including "Parasite" and "Anora," and has a specific track record of turning challenging, filmmaker-driven work into awards contenders.
What "Artificial" is actually about
The film centers on the 2023 weekend when OpenAI's board fired Altman and then rehired him within days, framed around the question of who controls the technology at the center of an AI arms race. Andrew Garfield plays Altman. Monica Barbaro plays former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Yura Borisov plays former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and Mark Rylance portrays Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton. Ike Barinholtz plays Elon Musk.
The screenplay was written by "SNL" alumnus Simon Rich. Cinematography is by Malik Hassan Sayeed, with an original score by Damon Albarn and editing by Guadagnino's longtime collaborator Marco Costa. The film was shot in San Francisco and Italy.
Why this matters for the AI-and-Hollywood story
We've covered the growing collision between Big Tech and the film industry — Google's investment in A24, A24's own directors publicly opposing AI, studios negotiating AI partnerships while simultaneously suing AI companies over copyright. "Artificial" arriving in theaters this fall adds a different dimension to that story: a film whose subject matter made it literally unpurchasable by tech-adjacent studios, landing instead with an indie distributor specifically because Neon doesn't have a $50 billion stake in the company the movie is critical of.
Whether "Artificial" is great filmmaking or just a timely headline depends on what's actually in the cut — nobody outside a small group of buyers has seen it yet. But the fact that it exists, that it got made, and that multiple major studios declined to distribute it specifically because of their AI relationships is itself the story worth tracking right now.
