Luca Guadagnino spoke out for the first time on the fallout around his Sam Altman biopic “Artificial” in an interview with Italian news show “Otto e Mezzo” Friday. The movie, which was abruptly dropped by Amazon MGM Studios and saw other would-be suitors like Netflix and Focus Features pulling out of the running, stars Andrew Garfield as the OpenAI founder and was nearly complete.
Asked why “the subject of artificial intelligence in today’s America is considered dangerous,” the “Challengers” and “Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker admitted that he “can’t say too much because we are right in the middle of this situation,” but that central to the “Artificial” story is what he called the tech oligarchy’s “truly radical control” of “the very identity of places like the United States and the entire world.”
“What matters most to me is how people are completely changing the face of things — not just society in terms of consumption and how we interact with these tools, but the very identity of places like the United States and the entire world,” Guadagnino said. (TheWrap transcribed the Italian interview to English using Google Translate.) “And that is indeed what is happening. Indeed, this small oligarchy — which nonetheless exercises truly radical control — [is central to the story].”
Amazon MGM, which developed the $40 million drama, announced June 19 that it would not move forward with a planned early 2027 release with a possible SXSW premiere next spring. CAA Media Finance, which represents Guadagnino, screened the film for potential new distributors shortly after, with Mubi and Neon reportedly among the distributors interested.
Amazon’s decision to drop the film came months after the company made a $50 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a cloud computing partnership, though the studio denied that the film’s subject matter and tone, which is said to feature a caustic portrayal of CEO Altman by lead star Garfield, had anything to do with its move.
Elsewhere in the “Otto e Mezzo” interview, Guadagnino pointed to the wealth disparity in the United States, specifically in the world’s technological capitol, San Francisco, where he filmed part of “Artificial.” That gap is also a theme he wanted to explore in the movie.
“The film was shot partly in San Francisco — a wonderful city, one of the great, distinguished cities of the United States, known to everyone as the city of Alfred Hitchcock’s films,” he said. “The city presented extraordinary contrasts: a place of great beauty but also of deep despair, with so many homeless people — so many living under the influence of fentanyl — while these wonderful, silent, self-driving cars glided right past them. To me, that right there is the perfect image to describe the theme; it is the perfect image.”
But the director also shared some hope that “Artificial” will land somewhere and see the world when all is said and done. He pointed to the 2003 cancellation of “The Reagans” at CBS after pressure from the Republican Party, but added that it eventually found a smaller home elsewhere.
“These are industrial-political issues — and not for the first time,” he said. “I read a great article yesterday recalling how, back in 2003, CBS canceled a major drama about the Reagans due to pressure from Republicans — it was actually cancelled, only to air later on a smaller channel.”
He continued: “To me, the issue isn’t artificial intelligence itself — that is, the application or tool used to generate ‘knowledge products’ or expressive content, like research, videos, or images. From one perspective, it’s just a technological gadget — and not a particularly sophisticated one, at that; it’s full of flaws, though it will likely improve over time. Naturally, the scientists who developed artificial general intelligence believe that — even though it currently amounts to little more than computing data scraped from everywhere, consuming vast amounts of energy and water — it might one day become independently sentient.”
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