{"id":871825,"date":"2026-10-05T17:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/871825\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T17:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:30:14","slug":"artificial-took-on-a-big-tech-giant-hollywood-wasnt-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/871825\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Artificial\u2019 Took on a Big Tech Giant. Hollywood Wasn\u2019t Ready"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt six o\u2019clock on a June Wednesday morning in Century City, a group of Neon<\/a> executives gathered at the headquarters of CAA for a secret screening. They did not know what they were about to watch. It had been made clear the surprise would be worthwhile. The lights dimmed, and there before them was Artificial<\/a>, Luca Guadagnino<\/a>\u2019s provocative new film about the birth of OpenAI and two of its founders, Sam Altman<\/a> and Ilya Sutskever. Amazon<\/a> MGM Studios had just decided, despite developing the project, they would not release it; one of the year\u2019s buzziest, most controversial titles was suddenly up for sale.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeon was immediately interested. The Tom Quinn<\/a>-led independent studio was the first to screen it, before competitors like Netflix, Searchlight and A24 had their look. Their reactions varied, but skewed very positive; all, with the exception of Neon and Mubi, eventually passed. Speculation ran rampant as to why: Was the movie not good? Too expensive, at its $40 million budget? Or were certain companies unwilling to take on the incendiary film due to their increasingly direct connections to Big Tech? (Amazon, for its part, had announced a planned investment of $50 billion in OpenAI months before deciding to sell off Artificial.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThese questions hung in the air all summer. The first, at least, is about to be answered, with Artificial set to bow Monday night at the New York Film Festival. Neon, which ultimately acquired the movie in a unique deal in which they paid nothing up front but committed to a $15 million marketing spend, will then release it in theaters on Christmas Day. The other rumors remain sticky \u2014 though the filmmakers aren\u2019t without their opinions on them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe concept of a conflict of interest is a very important, let\u2019s say, elephant in the room here,\u201d Guadagnino tells The Hollywood Reporter of his experience screening Artificial for various studios. \u201cOnce you understand the nature of every company\u2019s business, despite and beyond their love for the movie, you realize that some decisions are not the decisions they would\u2019ve made in a vacuum. \u2026. When the landscape of the studios is morphing and the studios are dealing with interests from Silicon Valley \u2014 let\u2019s say tycoons \u2014 that is something that makes the idea of art, the idea of representation, very slippery. The famous example of Orson Welles: a movie like Citizen Kane could probably not be done under the climate of today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAndrew Garfield<\/a>, who gives a hauntingly transformative performance in the film as Altman, isn\u2019t aware of any specific internal conversations among companies that passed on Artificial \u2014 but echoes Guadagnino\u2019s larger point: \u201cThe fight is on to make sure that we are allowed to make things freely. The centralization of power that we\u2019re witnessing happen can have a very, very chilling effect on how art is being allowed to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMonica Barbaro, Andrew Garfield, Cooper Hoffman, and Yura Borisov<\/a> in Artificial.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeon<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the last few weeks, leaders of OpenAI and other companies in the space have sounded the alarm on the acceleration of generative AI, on the need to slow their own work down to keep it safe. Artificial\u2019s timeliness in that regard is striking, even disturbing. The movie traces decades in the lives of Ilya (Anora\u2019s Yura Borisov) and Sam (Garfield), men from completely different worlds who bond and plot to change the world for the better in the sunny glow of Obama-era tech optimism, then find themselves at odds as the enormous \u2014 eventually, dangerous \u2014 capabilities of their technology reveal themselves in the Trump and Biden years. Several scenes and conversations in the film, set years ago, speak eerily to headlines of the past month alone.<\/p>\n

\n\tArtificial is written by humorist and Saturday Night Live alum Simon Rich, and was developed at Amazon before Guadagnino was hired to direct it. The shapeshifting director, whose credits range from the Oscar-winning romance Call Me by Your Name to the horror remake Suspiria, had worked with the company regularly, on commercial smashes (Challengers) and misfires (After the Hunt) alike. \u201cThey\u2019re family to me,\u201d Guadagnino says of Amazon. He reiterates this remains the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tSources say Rich\u2019s script was more broadly comic than Guadagnino\u2019s darkly funny final film. (Though you\u2019ve still got Ike Barinholtz<\/a>\u2019s Elon Musk<\/a>, often reduced here to little more than an obscenely wealthy punchline.) Artificial is introduced as Ilya\u2019s story before Sam takes charge of the narrative; accordingly, the tone turns almost sinister, with Ilya and eventual OpenAI CTO Mira Murati (Monica Barbaro) looking on in disempowered horror.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuadagnino and his D.P. Malik Hassan Sayeed give Artificial a true analog feel, shooting on 35mm with a playful liveness in the camerawork that contrasts with the gleaming, exactingly re-created Big Tech office spaces that hold much of the drama. The director approached the material as a Medusa\u2019s Touch-esque tale, with Ilya as the way in. \u201cYou start as a person, then you get touched by something that corrupts you inside out \u2014 and these corruptions start to spread and create a landscape of destruction all over,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLuca Guadagnino behind the scenes of \u2018Artificial.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeon<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is a purity that Ilya seems to have and that Yura definitely accesses in a very beautiful, profound way, a kind of almost childlike awe,\u201d Garfield adds. \u201cAnd with Sam, I was like, \u2018What does it take to not only run one of these companies, but make decisions that are going to hurt people, no matter how you slice it, as long as you are committed to winning the race and being the one to hold the Holy Grail in your hand? What does it take in order to sleep at night?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGuadagnino saw his actor, who also starred in After the Hunt, go there from moment one: \u201cWe tested him with prosthetics \u2014 fake nose, fake cheeks \u2014 and we filmed it and we thought it was totally ridiculous,\u201d he says. \u201cThen he played the movements of Altman, the neck of Altman, the walk of Altman, and we filmed that \u2014 and it was uncanny, with a simple, strategic usage of makeup in terms of shadow and light. In that moment I felt like, \u2018Wow, we\u2019re onto something with him here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmakers hired outside counsel to ensure Artificial stayed legally ironclad, while not pulling any punches in its portrait. (After production, key moments dramatized in the movie were backed by Ronan Farrow\u2019s sprawling, damning profile<\/a> of Altman in The New Yorker.) \u201cEverything that we say in the film is completely vetted and could be proven and double-proven,\u201d says Oscar-nominated producer Jennifer Fox (Michael Clayton). \u201cWithout that, Amazon corporately would not have allowed us to make the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe parameters changed as the shoot went on. Garfield would rein certain scenes in after legal had flagged them as \u201chyperbolic\u201d; others were added in and expanded upon based on new public information. They also had primary sources on set for color and accuracy. (Fox politely declines to name names.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHopefully what we\u2019ve done is that we\u2019ve pushed the envelope as far as possible without the risk of being taken to court,\u201d Garfield says. \u201cAnd hopefully we\u2019re speaking to something universal and deeper about the anxiety that we\u2019re all feeling about the future. This is maybe as far as we can take our obsession with not being human before we return to honoring the body, honoring a descent rather than a constant ascent. I feel it in myself. I feel it in my own soul. I want to be in the mud, in the muck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGarfield also viewed Artificial as the closing of a chapter in another way, going back to his turn in The Social Network as Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin \u2014 there, portraying more of the Ilya than the Sam. Initially, this was not to be the case. \u201cI was auditioning for Mark [Zuckerberg], and I was kind of told that the part was as good as mine,\u201d Garfield says. Then Jesse Eisenberg auditioned and proved undeniable for director David Fincher. \u201cSo this kind of scratched that itch for me. There was a dangling remaining itch that I wanted to dive into, really walk into and explore and leave no stone unturned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGarfield with Hoffman in \u2018Artificial.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeon<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cZero AI\u201d was used in the making of Artificial, Guadagnino says. That goes for all of his movies, in fact. \u201cI\u2019m an old-fashioned guy. I\u2019m analogic. I shoot on 35. I believe in good old performance,\u201d he says. \u201cJean Renoir used to say: \u2018You have to leave the door open to reality on a movie set.\u2019 And how do you do that if you are sending prompts to a computer?\u201d This philosophy, of course, extends to the very core of the film \u2014 of what it has to say, and why it may have scared some companies off: \u201cIt\u2019s not just that AI can wipe off humanity from planet earth in four years \u2014 we are destroying the environment and we are doing so mindlessly, and someone is getting more and more power into their hands while others are just digitizing questions to the ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tArtificial derives its power from its frankness \u2014 and so in the months leading up to Amazon\u2019s decision to sell the movie, opinions among the filmmakers varied as to where it stood. \u201cI can say that once I saw the development of dealmaking, and business-making, between Amazon and OpenAI, that was an interesting moment for me,\u201d Guadagnino says.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce the sale news landed, Garfield adds, \u201cI was really impressed by Amazon that they were doing it in the first place, so I wasn\u2019t incredibly surprised that they were like, \u2018OK, maybe this isn\u2019t for us to release\u2019 \u2014 and then I was doubly impressed when they didn\u2019t kill it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFox felt differently as a producer: \u201cWe were all very surprised. They didn\u2019t only write us a check to do the movie, they collaborated creatively with us and were great partners,\u201d she says, a sentiment echoed by sources familiar with the production process. Fox adds that the rationale provided by the studio to the filmmakers was roughly the same as the statement put out by the studio in June: \u201cWe believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio.\u201d (Amazon had no further comment for this story on its decision to not release the film.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce the sales process began, rumors swirled around the making and quality of Artificial. A Vulture report<\/a>, for instance, claimed that the movie required \u201cextensive reshoots\u201d following \u201call sorts of disasters\u201d during production. \u201cAbsolutely untrue and easy to check,\u201d Fox says. \u201cWe lost our actors to other films. We had contractual stop dates for them. It wasn\u2019t possible to have reshoots.\u201d Production materials reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter indicate that, at the end of the 34-day shoot in September 2025, the film was considered on-schedule. A source familiar with Amazon\u2019s oversight of Artificial corroborates that there were no reshoots and adds, \u201cThe film did not go over budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother insider notes, however: \u201c[Amazon] made the movie for too much money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe live in an age of post-truth and so anybody\u2019s opinion, and let\u2019s say pseudo-information, becomes information,\u201d Guadagnino says. \u201cI personally would never speculate on something that I don\u2019t know the actual facts of. So for me, it\u2019s a little bit frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll involved clearly feel Artificial has wound up at the right home, at the right time \u2014 with a tastemaking, independent company galvanized by the intense relevance of the storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Garfield, even the mad dash to find a new buyer felt fitting. \u201cI was kind of excited \u2014 it felt spicy,\u201d the actor says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Hell yeah, this is kind of punk rock.\u2019\u201d Now, after all the noise, viewers can finally have their say. \u201cUnless you\u2019re Spider-Man, it\u2019s really, really hard to know how an audience is going to respond,\u201d Garfield says. \u201cBut I want it to reach people. I want as many people to see it as possible. The universe is spinning forward, everything is going the way it\u2019s going \u2014 and we have a responsibility to ourselves to look at who\u2019s turning the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At six o\u2019clock on a June Wednesday morning in Century City, a group of Neon executives gathered at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[960,12779,25252,27729,11,88,13352,28465,23243,7047,367315,367316],"class_list":["post-871825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-mgm-studios","tag-andrew-garfield","tag-artificial","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-ike-barinholtz","tag-luca-guadagnino","tag-neon","tag-sam-altman","tag-tom-quinn","tag-yura-borisov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}