Garfield: Altman 'Seemed Great' Before Playing OpenAI CEO — SkimNews
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- Andrew Garfield stars as Sam Altman in director Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial," which world-premiered at the New York Film Festival; Garfield said he was initially won over after watching Altman's Congressional testimony but then "learned more about a person."
- Garfield spent "two to three months" listening to and watching footage of Altman while preparing, saying he felt a moral responsibility to make a film about those "we're giving all of our autonomy and power to."
- The ensemble includes Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, Ike Barinholtz as a 2014-era Elon Musk, Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, and Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati; the film dramatizes Altman's controversial firing and rehiring at OpenAI.
- Amazon MGM dropped the nearly completed film just after signing a $50 billion partnership with OpenAI, saying the movie would be "better served" elsewhere; Neon acquired it for a Dec. 25 theatrical release.
- Writer Simon Rich traced the project's origin to childhood friend Danny Selsam, an early OpenAI member who had been warning about AI dangers since 2008, and called the screenplay his "last-ditch effort to warn mankind."
- Sam Altman told Vanity Fair he hasn't seen the film and predicted it "will not be good as an accurate depiction," while adding "they're trying to make a good movie, and maybe it will be good."
Why it matters: Amazon MGM dropped a nearly finished film about OpenAI's CEO after locking in a $50 billion partnership with the same company, leaving indie distributor Neon to release a critical portrait of a figure Amazon now does business with — and Altman himself has dismissed the film without screening it, declining to engage with its warnings about the people "we're giving all of our autonomy and power to."
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