Luca Guadagnino's Artificial screened as a gala at the 70th BFI London Film Festival on October 11, giving UK audiences their first look at the film. The drama traces the five days in November 2023 when the OpenAI board fired and then reinstated CEO Sam Altman.
Andrew Garfield plays Altman in a cast that includes Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, and Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton. Simon Rich wrote the script. Damon Albarn composed the score.
The film's path to release became its own story. Amazon MGM, originally attached as distributor, dropped the project in June 2026, several days after signing a $50 billion investment deal with OpenAI. The studio said the film would perform better with a different studio. According to Variety, the decision was related to the film's unsympathetic portrayals of Altman and Musk, who denied involvement. A24, Focus Features, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Clockwork each screened the film and passed. Neon acquired worldwide rights in late June with no minimum guarantee.
Artificial premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 5. Early reviews are strong: 95 percent of critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a positive notice. The Wrap called it "a sensual, terrifying audit of our present and future." Altman, after seeing the trailer, called it an "awful movie" but acknowledged that Garfield had captured his walk and mannerisms.
Artificial opens in the United States on December 25, 2026, for a limited qualifying run before a wide release in early 2027. The UK release follows on January 22, 2027.
