Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images

On Tuesday evening, Neon announced it had picked up worldwide distribution rights to Artificial, the Social Network–esque biopic about embattled OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. While the movie’s acquisition price remains undisclosed and Neon has yet to reveal whether Artificial will hit theaters in time to qualify for this year’s awards season, its high-profile studio handover illuminates a new blurring of cultural and financial boundaries in Hollywood — one dictated by insurgent technology, politics, and a radical reordering of showbiz power structures.

Amid a wave of industry consternation last month, Amazon MGM Studios unceremoniously dropped the Luca Guadagnino–directed film, stating that “Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio” — conveniently omitting any mention that the studio’s retail-behemoth corporate mothership had entered into a multiyear strategic partnership with OpenAI, including a $50 billion investment deal earlier in the year. From there, the powerhouse Creative Artists Agency oversaw auction proceedings for the film that garnered interest from A24, Netflix, Warner Bros.’ specialty division Clockwork, Focus Features, and Mubi. Those companies were drawn in by the prospect of picking up a prestige project directed by an Oscar-nominated filmmaker (featuring Academy Award nominee Andrew Garfield as Altman, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, and Anora breakout Yura Borisov as the idealistic machine-learning engineer Ilya Sutskever) for what one insider described to me as a “subsidized” price — that is, a Black Friday–level discount.

Never mind that Artificial had been extensively test screened, was in the final stages of postproduction, and was earmarked to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The takeaway of Amazon MGM’s actions seemed immediately obvious, if totally unsubstantiated: Jeff Bezos was personally jettisoning the $50 million film lest its less-than-flattering portrayal of his wedding-guest invitee turned financial ally Altman imperil their nascent partnership. Two studio executives attending the CAA buyers screenings tell Vulture that they were informed “Bezos wasn’t going to release it” — seemingly establishing the kill-switch order from on high.

And that has troubling implications for Hollywood. In an era when fact-based scripts about other AI captains of industry are circulating across development execs’ desks — when Warner Bros. is in the process of being acquired by Paramount via big-tech monetization, Google recently entered into a $75 million AI research-and-development partnership with A24, and the girlfriend of Google founder and Alphabet controlling shareholder Sergey Brin is a MAGA influencer — the creative community is less likely to make movies about Silicon Valley multibillionaires just as they become more meddlesome than ever in public life.

“It’s pretty much fact by this point: Amazon made this investment in AI and now they’re like, ‘We can’t release this film,’” says an executive from one of the bidding companies who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly comment on the matter. “It really speaks to the oligarchy of tech bros. Suddenly, there’s these new people you have to worry about pissing off. And as a result, a Luca Guadagnino film is not going to be released by the company that was championing it. That, in and of itself, is huge. Hollywood should not be happy about that.”

But according to two sources with privileged knowledge of Artificial’s development history, Amazon’s decision to dump the movie may have also boiled down to certain systemic filmmaking problems. The film chronicles the “incredibly consequential days leading up to the sudden firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, as the fate of who gets to control the technology at the center of an AI arms race hangs in the balance,” according to a logline provided by Neon. It “lacked theater-worthy criteria,” however, and seemed “more of a streaming movie than a theatrical play,” according to an executive from one of the studios that turned the movie down.

Artificial can be construed as an occasionally thrilling “hit piece” on Altman, as another studio executive who saw it characterizes it. (This person also called it a hilarious, pinpoint-accurate satire of Silicon Valley social mores with impeccable performances by Garfield and Borisov.) But other sources who have either seen the movie or read drafts of its script note that it doesn’t necessarily exude four-quadrant commerciality.

Still, big questions around Artificial’s provenance continue to swirl. Chief among them: How did a studio whose corporate parent operates the world’s largest cloud computing platform green-light such a project in the first place? A look back at the movie’s development sheds light on the unusual spot Artificial occupies now.

Written by novelist-humorist Simon Rich (a former SNL staff writer also behind the screenplay for Seth Rogen’s 2020 comedy An American Pickle), Artificial was initially one of several Altman biopics making the Hollywood rounds at the time, another being shopped by Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B. Rich’s script was championed by David Heyman, a prolific producer and blockbuster veteran responsible for such megahits as Barbie, eight installments of the Harry Potter film series, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. In June 2024, Artificial landed at Amazon. And studio executives began their search for a director that fall with film critic turned film acquisitions and development exec Scott Foundas running point on the project.

While such recent Amazon MGM titles as 2023’s American Fiction, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos (2021), and Sound of Metal have racked up Oscar nominations and critical acclaim over the past few years, sources close to the studio say Amazon is now more focused on putting out less intellectually demanding, more broadly engaging entertainments, like Road House and the Jason Momoa–Dave Bautista two-hander The Wrecking Crew. Nonetheless, two insiders say Courtenay Valenti — Amazon’s head of theatrical and streaming, who fosters deep connections with Hollywood’s talent community — became convinced Artificial could become a prestige play for the studio: its equivalent to The Social Network, Sony’s 2010 Mark Zuckerberg biopic that won a raft of awards, including three Oscars, and become an unexpected box-office hit. But attaching a bankable director to Artificial — a ripped-from-the-headlines biographical drama calibrated around a known Trump ally infamous for his “consistent pattern of lying” — proved challenging.

According to two sources, the studio first approached Bennett Miller, the director of the acclaimed 2011 biodrama Moneyball, who turned them down flat. A string of other rejections followed, including from George Miller, the Australian action auteur behind the Mad Max franchise. (A representative from CAA, which represents both Bennett Miller and George Miller, said the directors did not turn Artificial down. CAA’s chief executive and co-chairman Bryan Lourd personally represents Guadagnino. Lourd’s daughter Billie Lourd delivers a supporting performance in Artificial.)

But by May 2025, it seemed that Amazon had found its man. Italian art-house ace Guadagnino was in high standing with the studio, having directed the Zendaya romantic tennis folie à trois Challengers for the studio and recently wrapped the Julia Roberts campus polemic After the Hunt (which would not fizzle at the box office and generate anti-feminist backlash until a few months later). More important, the Call Me By Your Name director had departed DC Studios’ comic-book adaptation Sgt. Rock (reportedly owing to script delays and scheduling conflicts; industry conjecture has suggested he either quit or was fired) and was open to new assignments.

Banking on the combined pedigree of Heyman and Guadagnino, Amazon green-lit Artificial’s budget at “$50 million net” (i.e. the total studio spend after you factor in government tax incentives, rebates, and subsidies), according to two inside sources, in part because the director was known around Hollywood for going over budget and over schedule. The play for Valenti, who previously served as Warner Bros.’ tastemaking production president and had worked at the Burbank backlot for 33 years, was to show the town that Amazon is talent friendly “even though they’re this big tech company,” says a talent agent who has regular dealings with the studio. (Amazon did not respond to Vulture’s request to speak with Valenti and Foundas.)

It remains unclear to what extent the movie’s existence was known “in Seattle,” as Amazon’s worldwide center of operations is known. According to Vulture’s sources, however, Guadagnino lived up to expectations with the Artificial production going over budget and requiring extensive reshoots. “There were all sorts of disasters,” one person with knowledge of the production says. (Guadagnino’s publicist did not reply to a request for comment for this story.) A source told Puck, meanwhile, that the movie’s tone “shifted markedly darker” from Rich’s script and how Guagadino originally pitched his vision for it.

In the end, Mike Hopkins, the head of Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video (who also, incidentally, spearheaded the studio’s infamous $75 million expenditure for the First Lady “outright bribe” hagiography Melania), reportedly made the decision to begin shopping Artificial to outside studio suitors. As unorthodox as the idea of Netflix potentially buying one of its main streaming competitor’s cast-off films might seem, another alternative is much worse: Amazon could have forever shelved the nearly completed project in order to take a tax write-down, as Warner Bros. did with the DC Studios’ adaptation Batgirl in 2022.

Ultimately, we may never know whether Bezos called a staff meeting and ordered his bag man to sell off Artificial in the spirit of a new age of OpenAI-Amazon amity or the movie simply failed to live up to studio expectations, compelling Amazon to cut its loss in the most strange, sudden, and jarringly public way. But half the people I interviewed dismissed the notion that any fear of Altman sparked the movie’s sale. If the movie was a masterpiece, they pointed out, there would have been a bidding war. The other half suspect something fishy is going on between the multi-bazillionaire broligarchs.

And yet, just about every company that passed on Artificial at auction just happens to have some connection to Silicon Valley seed money or a development deal with an AI company. I asked a studio executive who saw the movie and agreed to talk with me on background if they think Hollywood has finally and irrevocably been dominated by big tech. No, the person said, they just don’t care to hide it anymore. The pretense of any kind of protective barrier between Silicon Valley and Hollywood is long gone. “Artists are afraid to speak truth to power,” adds a talent agent who regularly does deals with Amazon. “That’s definitely something that’s resonating right now.”

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