Major Hollywood studios including Netflix and Warner Bros. have reportedly declined to distribute Luca Guadagnino’s biographical drama Artificial, which chronicles the 2023 leadership crisis at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s company.

Key Points

• Amazon MGM recently dropped the film, titled Artificial, despite it being near the end of postproduction and previously slated for a 2027 release.
• The screenplay, written by Simon Rich, focuses on the 2023 period when Sam Altman was briefly ousted from OpenAI by the board of directors.
• Major studios including Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros. have reportedly passed on acquiring the distribution rights for the project.
• Neon and Mubi remain potential distributors for the film, which was originally expected to have an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run.
• The industry shift coincides with A24’s new $75 million research partnership with Google’s DeepMind to develop AI-driven filmmaking technologies.

Why it Matters

The reluctance of major studios to distribute a film critical of Big Tech suggests a growing conflict of interest as entertainment companies increasingly rely on AI partnerships and investments. This trend threatens to stifle creative independence and limit the production of objective, investigative storytelling regarding the powerful executives shaping the future of artificial intelligence.