Amazon killed its finished $40M Sam Altman film after signing a $50B OpenAI deal
aakashgupta · x · 2026-10-08
- Amazon spent $40M on "Artificial," a nearly finished film about the November 2023 OpenAI board crisis, directed by Luca Guadagnino with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and a script by Simon Rich. Test screenings reportedly went well.
- In February Amazon signed a $50B multiyear partnership with OpenAI; four months later Amazon MGM put the film up for sale, with sources citing both the OpenAI investment and the film's unflattering portrayal of Altman.
- Neon won the bidding war, premiered it at the New York Film Festival, and slated it for Christmas. The actor playing Dario Amodei praised Garfield's "spooky" rendition of Altman's vocal fry and mannerisms.
More from Companies & People
- Tristan Harris' Center for Humane Technology lays off half its staff, goes 'founder-led' — nordicinst · 2026-10-08
- Veteran Engineer on Self-Teaching Deep Learning via Andrew Ng and fast.ai Courses — intellectronica · 2026-10-08
- AI project abandonment doubles to 42%, only 6% of firms see real enterprise impact — CurieuxExplorer · 2026-10-08
- Sakana AI launches official newsletter covering research, products and industry deployments — SakanaAILabs · 2026-10-08
- Levels.fyi data: ByteDance runs flattest with 28 engineers per engineering manager — FinanceYF5 · 2026-10-08
- Microsoft Security MVP suspended by GitHub for merely forking a public repo — evilsocket · 2026-10-08