> “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,” a spokesperson for Amazon said to Variety in a statement. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”
Well, yeah, I kind of agree. Amazon probably shouldn't be the one producing the film, and it sounds like they're working to get the rights sold to someone else.The headline also sucks because "after" means "months after with no evidence that it's related". It's just clickbait all around.
Either get used to more and more stuff like that, or regulate the sh* out of it. Without stopping stuff like that early on, the concentration of wealth and power only increases.
He’s not Steve Jobs or something. It’d be about as interesting as a Jeff Bezos film. Nobody cares.
2. Regardless of whether it is or isn't related, implying they are without any evidence is just speculation. There's a reason they didn't say "months after" in the headline, even though it would be much more informative and much less confusing!
You also seem to conflate "there's evidence for" and "you believe that". Those are very distinct statements. "you don't believe there's evidence for X" doesn't make sense here — I said "there is no evidence for X in the article", that's a fact, not a belief.
And you fell for it.
post hoc ergo propter hoc is how print media imply a unstated fact without falling foul of Betteridge's law of headlines.
Whether they're actually going to sell it is TBD. Until they do, they've taken no concrete action except cancel it. I don't think this article is clickbait.
They are claiming they will not. Many people would have to have the power to hold it up indefinitely, films get delayed by many different factors. It remains to be seen which happens.
To me it's the same situation again, but now the theaters (streaming platforms) owning the studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
What should they have done here — keep the movie despite the obvious conflict of interest? Be more secretive about the fact they're trying to separate so no one can write articles like these?
If they did the right thing, it would look exactly like this. And I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie.
Closest thing we have to a Hollywood today is games, but game makers can also make consoles and industry wide unions would never happen. Is there some unionization in games? Yeah, but I haven't heard of any single one that cover a significant number of different studios
A whole movie about him being fired from OpenAI just doesn’t sound compelling. A simple documentary would be a much better format, and likely more accurate and interesting.
What you’re saying seems to completely ignore the first amendment.
It’s trivial to make and distribute a video (or text website or audio recording). Just because one business does not want to pay for it does not entitle the public to it, like any other media.
See Trump
The bulk of downvotes I have received fall into two categories. One is from people who disagree with me, and the other is from people who believe that my critique of a bad argument means that I believe the opposite to the conclusion of the argument.
The latter is the one that bugs me more. Because I feel that a bad argument in support of a conclusion that I believe is damaging to the understanding of the conclusion because it represents a refuge that anyone arguing the opposite can cling to in order to undermine good arguments. They can legitimately ask "Why should I believe your good argument, if you express a similar degree of support for an obviously flawed argument" It signals that the position is held because of allegiance, not because it is correct.
Even scarier is that it raises the spectre of people passionately advocating for a position when they themselves do not respect the opinion, but simply acknowledge that this is the position of their allegiance.
There is experimental evidence for this on both sides of American politics with people being tested flipping their opinions on identical policies just by presenting them as being the favoured opinion of a different side.
I take the opposing viewpoint. They don’t have to “refuse” to give away the movie rights, they can just… not do it. Pitchforks in three months or is that still reasonable? Six months? Two years?
I don’t believe a word they say until I see action that backs it up.
Look at their distribution of the Melania movie. It was very obviously a money losing favour to Trump. But they’d never admit as such because why would they? And what do I gain by taking them at their word that it’s a wonderful piece of film deserving of the money spent on it when that’s obviously untrue?
What he’s suggesting is to violate the first amendment. You cant just tell tech companies they cant have studios.
It's trivial to shout into the void
It's nontrivial to get heard
Freedom of speech is not sufficient in a world where it is so easy for the powerful to drown out all but the biggest voices
Why do you feel differently?
Maybe it's not so simple?
https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-alt...
I don't disagree I just don't think it has moved the needle that much. Powerful publishers still direct an enormous amount of the content available online
And there are fewer of them, because they have been consolidating for decades now
Edit: I think that a lot of people overestimate how much online publishing is independent. A vast majority of it is still backed/funded/owned by legacy media and publishers.
I see this all the time with video games. People will say "look at how popular "New Release" is! Indie games are so successful nowadays!" But it turns out that the game they're talking about is backed by a huge publisher
Amazon MGM is no longer partnering with Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino on his forthcoming Sam Altman biopic, Artificial.
The nearly completed film, starring Andrew Garfield as the controversial OpenAI founder, was originally slated for release in early 2027.
The premiere date, however, is now in limbo after the film was removed from the studio’s roster months after Amazon agreed to expand its $38 billion, multi-year deal to run OpenAI’s systems on its cloud services. The new partnership, announced in February, includes a $50 billion investment in the AI company and the development of customized AI models.
“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,” a spokesperson for Amazon said to Variety in a statement. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”
The Independent has contacted Amazon for further comment.

Luca Guadagnino's next feature film, 'Artificial,' is a biopic about the OpenAI founder Sam Altman (pictured) (Getty Images)
Artificial would have marked the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director’s third Amazon film, following the critically acclaimed Zendaya-led tennis romance Challengers (2024) and the academic scandal drama After the Hunt (2025), starring Julia Roberts.
The new movie is said to chronicle the brief period when Altman was abruptly ousted as OpenAI’s CEO in 2023 and subsequently rehired. Monica Barbaro and Ike Barinholtz star alongside Garfield as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while Yura Borisov, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O’Dowd, Mark Rylance and Margo’s Got Money Troubles breakout Thaddea Graham round out the cast.
It is unclear exactly why the film was dropped, but according to Variety, the news came after it had already undergone positive screen tests.
'Artificial' would have been Luca Guadagnino's third movie with Amazon (AFP/Getty)
An early viewer told the publication that the film’s portrayals of Altman and newly minted trillionaire Musk are the two characters audiences would “like the least.” It was also reported that Amazon had already seen every early iteration of the script before Guadagnino was hired to direct.
Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have developed a high-profile friendship over the years. In fact, the former was in attendance at Bezos’s wedding to Lauren Sánchez, which took place in Venice, Italy, in 2025.
In recent months, the two have continued to deepen their professional partnership that began in 2015, when Amazon became one of OpenAI’s first investors. Ten years later, the companies closed their first major deal in November 2025, allowing the ChatGPT maker to run its systems on Amazon’s U.S. data centers.
Artificial is reportedly being screened by other studios in a bid for a new distributor.