Sam Altman movie blocked by AI partner distributors
Last year, director Luca Guadagnino signed up for “Artificial,” a movie about Sam Altman and that weekend in late 2023 when the OpenAI board kicked Sam out for being a serial liar. [Deadline, 2025] It was going great! This was going to be a good movie! Then Amazon abruptly pulled the plug in...
Last year, director Luca Guadagnino signed up for “Artificial,” a movie about Sam Altman and that weekend in late 2023 when the OpenAI board kicked Sam out for being a serial liar. [Deadline, 2025] It was going great! This was going to be a good movie! Then Amazon abruptly pulled the plug in mid-June: [Variety] We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home. Amazon weren’t suddenly surprised or something: “Artificial” already had several test screenings, which went down very positively, and screened for other studios on Thursday. Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM, dropped the film after he watched an early cut. This also undercut Amazon’s head of film Courtenay Valenti, whose project it was. [Puck, archive] Nobody at Amazon would say why they pulled the plug. But Variety headlined the obvious reason — Amazon’s funding deal with OpenAI in February. And Altman attended Jeff Bezos’s wedding last year. According to an insider who has seen the movie, the characters of Altman and Musk are the least sympathetic and the ones audiences would “like the least.” Guadagnino is shopping the nearly-finished film around other distributors — but so far, several, including Netflix and A24, have said no. [Variety] A24 just happened to announce a $75 million AI video deal with Google a few days later — to the disgust of their directors and the fans. [WSJ; Reddit] UPDATE: Neon has acquired “Artificial.” [World of Reel] Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business