Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman movie Artificial has been set for New York and London Film Festival berths.
The film will have its world premiere in New York’s Main Slate on October 5th with Guadagnino and members of the cast in attendance. In London, the film will get a Gala screening on October 11th with talent expected to attend.
It’s not clear yet whether there will be press conferences and full media glare on the film. As we reported in early July, at that stage a traditional, full festival rollout was unlikely. But, as we also noted, things can change, and they have. To an extent. We reported then that a festival berth of some kind was expected but a surprise screening sounded to us the more likely route at that time.
The movie starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman has been the subject of added media scrutiny following Amazon‘s decision to ditch the film in June. Neon boldly stepped in to release the project.
Oscar nominee Garfield stars as the controversial OpenAI CEO. Amazon stepped away from the project soon after it struck a massive partnership with the tech company in February to expand OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services and develop custom AI models, which included a $50B investment on Amazon’s part.
Neon picked up the film without having to surrender an MG. Instead, it’s covering P&A via a straight distribution deal. This is seen as friendly to the creatives, with Amazon potentially prepared to write off a chunk of its spend and for key creatives and filmmakers to get their backend should the movie make money.
Neon is expected to release the film this year and has said it will give it an Oscar campaign. There is bullishness among some of those close to the movie that it should at least feature in the awards conversation.
Oscar nominees Monica Barbaro, Mark Rylance and Yura Borisov are among the stacked cast in Artificial, which chronicles the days leading up to the sudden firing and reinstatement of Altman as CEO of OpenAI, “as the fate of who gets to control the technology at the center of an AI arms race hangs in the balance.”
The script, penned by SNL alum Simon Rich, is produced by Rich and Guadagnino, alongside Heyday Films’ David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford, and Jennifer Fox.