Neon has given Artificial a new home, taking global rights to Luca Guadagnino’s film from Amazon MGM Studios. The move keeps the project alive for this year’s awards race after Amazon MGM Studios stepped back from releasing it.
Andrew Garfield stars as Sam Altman in the film, which tracks the days leading up to Altman’s sudden firing and reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI in 2023. Neon said Artificial is joining its awards slate for this year, but it did not set a release date.
Amazon MGM Studios and Neon
The rights deal was negotiated by Alison Cohen for Neon, with CAA Media Finance and Amazon MGM Studios. That transfer matters because it moves the film from a studio that chose not to release it to one that is now placing it on an awards track, changing who controls the rollout and how soon the movie can reach audiences.
Amazon MGM Studios said it believed Artificial would be better served by a different studio and was working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home. The deal follows the studio’s decision, announced two weeks earlier, that it would not release the film.
Sam Altman and OpenAI
The movie comes from a script by Simon Rich and was produced by Rich, Guadagnino, David Heyman, Jeffrey Clifford, and Jennifer Fox. It was shot in San Francisco and Italy, with editing by Marco Costa, cinematography by Malik Hassan Sayeed, production design by Stefano Baisi, costumes by JW, and original score and original songs by Damon Albarn.
The cast also includes Mark Rylance, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Billie Lourd, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Cooper Hoffman, and Ike Barinholtz. For viewers, the immediate takeaway is simple: the film has not gone away; it has just changed hands, and Neon is now the studio steering its path into the Oscar race.
Oscar race for Artificial
Deadline reported that the project had seemed to be heading to Mubi before the Neon deal, and that some studios had passed on screening it because of its subject matter. Amazon MGM Studios remains in business with Guadagnino despite dropping Artificial, leaving Neon with a film that already has a high-profile premise and a clear awards-season goal.
The unresolved question now is when Neon will release Artificial. For anyone tracking the film’s route, the meaningful change is that the title has a distributor again, but the timing of its next public step has not been set.
