After being saved from release limbo by Neon, Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman biodrama “Artificial” screened for audiences at the New York Film Festival on Monday. These first crowds are glad it made its way to theaters.
“‘Artificial’ is a pitch-perfect dark comedy about the absence of responsibility in the face of apocalyptic certainty,” said @erickohn on X. “Andrew Garfield walks a fine line between movie monster, buffoonish mogul, and evil genius. A fun/scary ride that embodies the paradox at its center.”
The film, directed by Guadagnino and written by Simon Rich, follows Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the period when he was fired from and rehired by the company in 2023. “Anora’s” Yura Borisov co-stars as Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientific officer.
“Guadagnino guts Silicon Valley with his obsessive pulse & a powerful farce in which Andrew Garfield completely shines,” said @jairojimenez_ on X. “A feverish, visceral corporate drama that proves what is truly artificial was never in the machines, but in the boardroom. An essential film.”
Amazon MGM initially lined up “Artificial” before controversially uncommitting to releasing the film on June 19, with speculation brewing that the company’s OpenAI ties contributed to the decision. This decision sparked conversation over the potential conflicting interests between tech firms and their entertainment development branches, with Amazon’s commitment to OpenAI coming at odds with the film’s content. Neon acquired the $40 million film roughly two weeks later after would-be suitors like Netflix and Focus Features dropped out of the race.
Now, it seems like Neon has another major awards contender on its hands.
“‘Artificial’ is tremendous, a blistering and furious reworking of ‘The Social Network’ for a world that’s well past the point of destruction, intimate in character but sweeping in scale, more acutely aware of our expiration date than any other film this year,” said @eventualforever on X. “A major achievement.”
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“Artificial” releases in theaters on Dec. 25.
