Amazon has abruptly shelved “Artificial,” its high-profile film about Sam Altman’s brief 2023 ouster as OpenAI CEO, pulling the nearly completed project from its release calendar and shopping it to rival studios instead.
The decision came from Mike Hopkins, who oversees Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. He told director Luca Guadagnino and the producing team that Amazon wouldn’t move forward with the planned release.
“We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it were released by a different studio.”
The film, written by Simon Rich, stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and Yura Borisov as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. It draws comparisons to “The Social Network.” But the reportedly unflattering portrayal of Altman — power-hungry and manipulative, with Geoffrey Hinton calling him “one of the most manipulative people on the planet” in one scene — likely contributed to the decision.
A person familiar with Amazon’s thinking said the finished film’s tone grew considerably darker than the original pitch, prompting Hopkins to halt its release after viewing a cut.
The timing is notable. Amazon pumped $50 billion into OpenAI earlier this year. Altman has cultivated close ties to the Trump administration — relationships that Amazon and Jeff Bezos have also sought to maintain. Creative Artists Agency is now screening the film for potential new distributors.
It’s a strange situation: a nearly finished film about one of the most powerful people in tech, shelved by a company that just made a massive bet on his company. Coincidence? Probably not.
