Amazon drops Guadagnino’s Artificial after the OpenAI deal

Amazon has dropped Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s controversial Sam Altman biopic, just as the film was preparing for a 2027 awards-season run. The news comes after the announcement of a new partnership between Amazon and OpenAI, the company led by Altman himself.

In a statement, Amazon said it believes Artificial “will be better served by another studio” and that it is working with the film’s team to find a new home for the project. Amazon will immediately invest $15 billion in OpenAI, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months if certain conditions are met.

The Amazon-OpenAI Deal Weighs on Artificial’s Fate

Artificial, written by satirical author Simon Rich (Inside Out, Wonka, A Minecraft Movie), focuses on Sam Altman’s firing and subsequent reinstatement in 2023. According to early reports, the film offers a far from flattering portrait of Altman, a close personal friend of Jeff Bezos.

The central figure in the story is reportedly Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, played by Anora star Yura Borisov. In 2023, Sutskever was one of the board members who removed Altman from the CEO role. After Altman was reinstated a week later, Sutskever left the board.

Andrew Garfield plays Altman, while Ike Barinholtz portrays Elon Musk. The cast also includes Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Rylance.

Amazon added that it still has “the utmost respect and admiration” for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker, also pointing to a long-standing relationship the studio hopes to continue.

A Starry Cast, an Uncomfortable Script and an Industrial Retreat

Last year, both Warner Bros. and Paramount passed on Simon Rich’s idea. Amazon, by contrast, chose to board the project while it was still at script stage.

The film had been aiming for a wide release in early 2027, strategically avoiding a direct clash with Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, the direct sequel to David Fincher’s The Social Network, starring Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg and Mikey Madison as Frances Haugen, the whistleblower involved in the 2021 Facebook leak.

Now Artificial must look for a new distributor with the film already shot, and for Guadagnino, finding a new home may not even be the hardest part. When studios depend on the same tech giants that cinema tries to examine, every critical film also becomes a balance-sheet item, a partnership problem, a phone call to avoid.

Artificial has not yet reached audiences, but perhaps it has already said too much.