\n\tWe have reached the point where every awards season produces a movie nobody wants to be seen with. This year, it might also be a movie that one very specific person would prefer no one sees at all.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat movie is \u201cArtificial<\/a>,\u201d Luca Guadagnino\u2019s dramatization of the 2023 weekend that nearly toppled OpenAI, which Amazon MGM Studios dropped<\/a> from its slate, as Variety reported. The move came after Amazon struck a partnership with the tech company in February to expand OpenAI\u2019s use of Amazon Web Services and develop custom AI models, a deal that included a $50 billion investment from Amazon.<\/p>\n \n\tNow, nearly two weeks later, Tom Quinn\u2019s indie company Neon<\/a> has closed a deal to acquire the film<\/a> and confirmed it will get a qualifying release for this year\u2019s Oscar race. The anticipated drama joins Neon\u2019s expansive and crowded lineup, which includes high-profile Cannes acquisitions such as Cristian Mungiu\u2019s Palme d\u2019Or winner \u201cFjord,\u201d starring Sebastian Stan; James Gray\u2019s \u201cPaper Tiger,\u201d with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson; and Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s Japanese drama \u201cAll of a Sudden,\u201d in addition to titles still to come such as \u201cClarissa,\u201d a reimagining of \u201cMrs. Dalloway\u201d starring Sophie Okonedo, and \u201cA Place in Hell,\u201d with Michelle Williams and directed by Chloe Domont, whose sophomore feature follows her acclaimed 2023 debut \u201cFair Play.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to sources, discussions about any possible festival debut are in their early stages and ongoing. Nonetheless, the studio and filmmakers may already have the bones of a strong Oscar season narrative before a single frame is even shown.<\/p>\n \n\tWritten by \u201cSNL\u201d alum Simon Rich, the film focuses on the brief period when Sam Altman was fired from his role at OpenAI and then rehired days later. Andrew Garfield<\/a> plays Altman, with Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk.<\/p>\n \n\tThe parallels to the 2024 awards cycle of Ali Abbasi\u2019s Donald Trump origin story \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d are hard to ignore. Both are timely portraits of a powerful living figure. Both spooked the buyers who should have been fighting over them. And both arrive with the kind of baggage that seems to have studios\u2019 legal and corporate-affairs departments misplacing their artistic backbones.<\/p>\n \n\tAmazon MGM developed \u201cArtificial\u201d and had planned to release it in early 2027, with chatter about qualifying it on this year\u2019s calendar and even bowing it on the fall festival circuit, where Guadagnino has routinely debuted his work. Now the studio has walked away from the project entirely, a decision that landed just months after that $50 billion OpenAI commitment. Amazon insists the subject matter had nothing to do with its decision. Hollywood and a loud chunk of social media are reading it otherwise.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat happens next is where the awards story begins. Variety had previously<\/a> reported that Focus Features, Warner Bros.\u2019 Clockwork, A24 and Netflix all screened the film in the days after Amazon\u2019s exit and passed, while Mubi pursued it before Neon ultimately put itself in pole position. Even the indies had reasons to be careful. A24, for instance, is backed by Josh Kushner\u2019s Thrive Capital, which holds a board seat and ranks among OpenAI\u2019s largest and most high-profile backers.<\/p>\n \n\tThat is the \u201cApprentice\u201d playbook exactly. The Sebastian Stan-led Trump story scared off distributors and infuriated some producers with ties to Trump before Tom Ortenberg\u2019s independent label, Briarcliff, stepped in. The gamble to go with a small-scale distributor ultimately paid off with Oscar attention, including a best actor nomination for Stan and a supporting nod for Jeremy Strong as lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn. The lesson strategists took from it was simple: Controversy isn\u2019t always a weakness. Sometimes it fuels the campaign.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat makes \u201cArtificial\u201d so fascinating is that the film is reportedly very good. Conversations with industry professionals who have seen an unfinished cut that currently runs north of two hours describe it as Guadagnino\u2019s answer to \u201cThe Social Network.\u201d That is its own irony, given that Aaron Sorkin\u2019s \u201cThe Social Reckoning,\u201d a standalone follow-up to the 2010 best picture-nominated drama, is set to open Oct. 9. Two Silicon Valley sagas in a single season could either feed off or eat into each other.<\/p>\n \n\tCoincidentally, Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg in the Sorkin film, while Garfield had a Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2010 original.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to industry sources who have seen the film, Garfield delivers a \u201csolid\u201d and \u201csurprising\u201d turn in what one person described as a \u201ccampy\u201d film. At the same time, two recent Oscar nominees \u2014 Borisov (\u201cAnora\u201d) and Barbaro (\u201cA Complete Unknown\u201d) \u2014 emerged as cast standouts. Another source says the movie is \u201cGuadagnino\u2019s best in nearly a decade.\u201d In April, World of Reel<\/a> reported a test screening that drew positive notices.<\/p>\n \n\tNonetheless, this moment is what separates \u201cArtificial\u201d from Guadagnino\u2019s recent run. The Italian director has not been nominated by the Academy since \u201cCall Me by Your Name\u201d in 2017 (he was nominated as a producer), which earned four total Oscar noms, winning best adapted screenplay for James Ivory. Everything since has generated critical divides, conversations and snubs on nomination morning. \u201cChallengers\u201d posted a worldwide gross of $96 million but failed to secure a single nomination despite early traction. \u201cQueer\u201d was billed as Daniel Craig\u2019s Oscar vehicle and came up empty. The commercial picture has been softer still: \u201cSuspiria\u201d was a box-office disappointment, and neither \u201cQueer\u201d nor last year\u2019s \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d became the kind of earner that resets a filmmaker\u2019s leverage.<\/p>\n \n\tSo a movie that tests well, about a subject the entire culture is arguing about, lands in Guadagnino\u2019s lap at precisely the moment he needs another breakthrough. The catch is that the same heat that kept some other potential buyers away is the heat that could carry it through a season.<\/p>\n \n\tStill in the final stages of post-production, \u201cArtificial\u201d had been eyeing a festival launch before Amazon\u2019s abrupt exit. The movie could be in play for something as splashy as the Venice Film Festival, where the auteur has debuted many of his past movies. Neon could even opt for a launch like Telluride, where Guadagnino brought his unconventional (yet brilliant<\/a>) \u201cBones and All.\u201d Neon knows this terrain well. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cArtificial\u201d reportedly paints Altman as a pathological liar and Musk as a villain. Instead of a horror story, the terror on display is the destruction that the tech bros are unleashing onto the world. Post-DOGE, do people want to buy tickets for that? Can they stomach it? \u201cArtificial\u2019s\u201d commercial prospects were the question mark hanging over the executives who were considering it. Surely, Neon\u2019s marketing team is weighing how best to position it \u2014 for both box office and awards prospects \u2014 now that the deal is done.<\/p>\n \n\tBut as \u201cArtificial\u201d was saved by its white-knight distributor, it\u2019s worth remembering that the riskiest title can also be the one with the clearest awards lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We have reached the point where every awards season produces a movie nobody wants to be seen with.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[33071,11026,146,85,46,14806,3220],"class_list":["post-520379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andrew-garfield","tag-artificial","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-neon","tag-oscars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}