Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman! Teaser trailer for Artificial, the film about the inside story of OpenAI, revealed
Studio Neon has released the first teaser trailer for Luca Guadagnino's new film Artificial, which centres on Andrew Garfield as OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. In it Guadagnino tackles one of the strangest corporate coups of recent times. The film has also finally landed a release date: it opens in limited release in US cinemas on 25 December and expands into wide release during January, which secures it a place in the Oscar race.
Five days that shook Silicon Valley
The screenplay was written by Simon Rich and the film traces the rise of machine learning before turning to the November crisis of 2023. That was when OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever helped push Altman out of the company, only for the chief executive to return a few days later. The board removed Altman on 17 November 2023 and he was back in the job after just five days. New York's Film at Lincoln Center describes the film as a journey through two decades of machine learning research up to the current crisis around artificial intelligence.
A starry cast
For Andrew Garfield this is a return to the world of technology. In The Social Network he played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and now he returns to Silicon Valley in Guadagnino's darker take. Monica Barbaro plays former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, Anora star Yura Borisov plays former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Mark Rylance plays Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Ike Barinholtz plays co-founder Elon Musk. Cooper Hoffman portrays Greg Brockman and the film also features Jason Schwartzman, Zosia Mamet, Chris O'Dowd, Cooper Koch and Billie Lourd. Czech audiences may remember Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez from A Complete Unknown.
Sam Altman: “Together we have opened Pandora's box. Countries will fall. Entire industries will collapse.”
Garfield makes no secret of having approached the role at a distance from his own opinions. He never met Altman in person and worked from the screenplay, interviews, publicly available material and his own research. He tried to understand the character's desires, needs, fears, blind spots and unconscious prejudices, because in his view his own take on artificial intelligence, OpenAI and Altman himself matters less during filming than the ability to inhabit the character from the inside.
“I am not playing him. I am playing one version, one interpretation,” Andrew Garfield says of the role of Sam Altman on the podcast The Discourse from The Playlist.
Behind the camera
The film is produced by Rich and Guadagnino together with David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford of Heyday Films and Jennifer Fox. Shooting took place in San Francisco and in Italy, editing is handled by Guadagnino's long-time collaborator Marco Costa, cinematography by Malik Hassan Sayeed, production design by Stefano Baisi, costumes by JW, and the original score and songs were composed by Damon Albarn. Filming began on 30 July 2025 in San Francisco's Dolores Park, continued in Turin and wrapped in October. For cinematographer Sayeed this is a second collaboration with Guadagnino after the drama After the Hunt. The budget is estimated at 40 million dollars and the running time is 140 minutes.
The film Amazon let slip away
Artificial was made under Amazon MGM Studios, but its path to cinemas was anything but smooth. In June Amazon MGM Studios suddenly dropped the nearly finished film, shortly after Amazon announced a huge partnership with OpenAI worth 50 billion dollars. Amazon has never publicly linked the two moves, yet questions immediately arose as to whether a critical drama about the company had become awkward given the strengthening relationship with Altman. Amazon had in fact signed the extensive multi-year deal with OpenAI back in late February. Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, reportedly concluded that the film had turned out darker than he originally expected.
“The film will be better served by another studio,” said a statement from Amazon MGM Studios.
Of those who saw the film at screenings held by the CAA agency, Netflix, A24 and Focus all passed on it, and Mubi was in play as well. Other reports claimed that Artificial had gone over budget, required extensive reshoots and turned into a substantially darker film than the one originally offered. One of the buyers who saw the film claimed that there was no grand conspiracy behind the rejection and that it was more a matter of taste.
“It is boring, ponderous and another Luca misstep,” claimed an unnamed source, according to Screen Daily, from one of the studios that saw the film at closed screenings.
The rescue eventually came from Neon. On 30 June the studio announced that it had won worldwide rights in a competitive process and wants to build an Oscar campaign around the film. Neon has the Oscar winners Parasite and Anora to its name and is also behind the last seven Palme d'Or winners from Cannes. Garfield himself says the Amazon exit both surprised him and did not surprise him at the same time. The controversy was further fuelled by journalist Matthew Belloni of Puck, who had claimed earlier that he had obtained a copy of the screenplay suggesting that neither Musk nor Altman is likely to be thrilled by their portrayals, with Musk at one point even labelled a “dictator” in the text. Belloni did point out, however, that this was a working draft which could have changed before shooting.
A New York premiere instead of Venice
Guadagnino usually premieres his films in Venice, where he won the Silver Lion in 2022 for Bones and All. Artificial, however, did not make it to the Lido. Venice festival director Alberto Barbera explained that Neon did not want to show the film in Venice before selling it worldwide, so its absence had to do with timing and distribution rather than with a lack of interest. The gala premiere takes place on 5 October at the 64th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall with Guadagnino and members of the cast in attendance, and six days later comes a gala screening at the BFI London Film Festival in London. And while Altman heads for New York, Venice meanwhile saw a great stir around the premiere of Alex Gibney's documentary Musk. Autumn simply belongs to tech billionaires.
A Czech release has not been confirmed so far. ČSFD lists the film under its original title Artificial and no Czech distributor has claimed it yet.
Guadagnino and his films
The Italian director is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European cinema. After the drama A Bigger Splash with Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson came the breakthrough romance Call Me by Your Name, followed by the horror Suspiria, the cannibal road movie Bones and All with Timothee Chalamet, the tennis drama Challengers with Zendaya, the Burroughs adaptation Queer with Daniel Craig and last year's drama After the Hunt with Julia Roberts. Artificial is therefore his third film in less than two years.
PREMIERE: USA 25 December 2026 (limited), January 2027 (wide release); Czech Republic not confirmed so far
Sources: Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, The Playlist, Screen Daily, AP News, Forbes, The A.V. Club, Analytics Insight, The Business Standard, Wikipedia