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Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman biopic, which is expected to win an award next year, has been dropped by the distributor, Amazon.
In the words first spoken by Puck, Amazon he said that he believes that “The production will be better served if it is released by a different studio and work together with the film production team to find the film a new home”.
Amazon’s decision to abandon the project comes after a major deal between Amazon and OpenAI, where Altman is CEO. The deal will see Amazon – whose owner, Jeff Bezos, is friends with Altman – immediately invest $15bn in the company, “followed by another $35bn in the coming months as certain conditions are met,” according to the artificial intelligence company’s website. This follows $38bn cloud computing deal signed by the two companies last year.
He believes the film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, is not a cheesy portrait of the tech mogul.
“We have great respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a long-standing relationship that we hope to continue,” Amazon added.
The film, written by award-winning comedy writer Simon Rich, wrapped shooting last fall and is said to focus on shooting and rehiring Altman in 2023.
Page Six report last month that the hero of the story of Rich and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, played with Anora star Yura Borisov. In 2023, Sutskever was one of the board members who removed Altman as CEO; After Altman was reinstated a week later, Sutskever stepped down from the board.
The film was released in early 2027, after receiving awards in the US at Christmas, avoiding competition from Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning. A sequel to David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), which starred Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, the film also stars Jeremy Strong as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The Social Reckoning also stars Anora as the victim of questionable dealings with a tech billionaire; and stars Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen, who was involved Facebook release for 2021.
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 Puck reported that Warner Bros. and Paramount both turned down Rich’s script out of concern that it was “nonsensical”, citing those who deny that the script was shopped around and that it was bought by Amazon for the script.
Guadagnino’s latest film, After the Huntfeatured Garfield as a student accused of rape. His other roles include Challengers, Call Me By Your Name, Queer and A Big Splash.
Rich’s writing and short stories have won him much acclaim and popularity. His credits include Inside Out, Wonka and A Minecraft Movie, as well as a script for the 2020 Seth Rogen film, An American Pickle – based on Rich’s New Yorker story. Sell it.
