Luca Guadagnino's Artificial won't be seen at Venice, Telluride, or Toronto this fall. Three months after Amazon MGM Studios dropped the $40 million biographical drama following a $50 billion cloud infrastructure deal with OpenAI, distributor Neon has confirmed the film will bypass the traditional fall festival circuit and pursue Oscar qualifying directly.
Amazon's departure was brief. "We believe that 'Artificial' will be better served if it were released by a different studio," the studio said. What followed was months of silence from major buyers. According to World of Reel, Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros. all passed on acquiring the film at zero upfront cost. Neon stepped in with no minimum guarantee, absorbing an estimated $20 million in marketing and distribution costs. Its recent slate includes Cristian Mungiu's Fjord, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden, and James Gray's Paper Tiger.
Written by Simon Rich and shot by cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, the film dramatizes the days in November 2023 when Sam Altman was fired and rehired at OpenAI. Andrew Garfield plays Altman. Monica Barbaro plays former CTO Mira Murati. Mark Rylance is Geoffrey Hinton. Ike Barinholtz plays Elon Musk. Damon Albarn composed the score. According to AV Club, board characters in the film describe Altman as a "sociopath," and Amazon found the portrayal "insufficiently sympathetic toward Altman" before walking away.
Guadagnino was terse about Amazon's decision: "These are industrial policies that are certainly not new." Neon, for its part, stated: "The acquisition underscores NEON's commitment to partnering with visionary filmmakers, and bringing ambitious cinema to audiences around the world. Artificial will compete in this year's Oscar race."
Whether that campaign holds without Venice or TIFF as its launching pad is an open question. No release date has been announced.