Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI film has been dropped by Amazon, just months after the company announced a $50billion investment in the AI firm.
Last summer, it was revealed that the director – known for films including Challengers, Call Me By Your Name and Queer – had signed on to make Artificial, a film that would document the saga of Sam Altman being fired and swiftly rehired as the CEO of OpenAI in 2023.
Amazon MGM Studios were the studio behind the project, but today (June 19), it was reported by Puck that they had dropped the film, despite it nearly being completed. It will reportedly now be offered to other studios.
“We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker – not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” an Amazon spokesperson told Variety. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”
In February, Amazon and OpenAI announced a major partnership worth $50billion, designed to expand OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services and to develop custom AI models for Amazon platforms.
The film will focus on the events of November 2023, in which the OpenAI board fired Altman after concerns over safety and accusations of abusive behaviour. Just five days later, after pushback from OpenAI employees and an intervention from Microsoft, OpenAI reinstated Altman as CEO and replaced most of the board members that had initially fired him.
Artificial is likely to find a new home, with Andrew Garfield playing Altman, A Complete Unknown’s Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, Anora’s Yura Borisov as OpenAI scientist Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk.
It would have been Guadagnino’s third collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios, after acclaimed tennis drama Challengers, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, and campus drama After The Hunt, with Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Garfield.
The director is also working on a “new interpretation” of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho, with Austin Butler reportedly in line to star as Patrick Bateman.