Guadagnino's Sam Altman Film 'Artificial' to World Premiere at NYFF — SkimNews
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- Film at Lincoln Center added Luca Guadagnino's 'Artificial' to the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival as a late addition, with the world premiere set for October 5 at Alice Tully Hall.
- The film stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, and Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton, tracing machine learning research from 2003 through OpenAI's founding.
- Amazon MGM originally set up the film in early 2025 and completed production that fall, but dropped it in June after entering a $50 billion deal with OpenAI for AWS cloud functionality.
- Neon picked up 'Artificial' almost immediately after Amazon's June drop.
- Guadagnino previously premiered 'After the Hunt,' 'Call Me by Your Name,' 'Bones and All,' and 'Queer' at NYFF, making this his fifth film at the festival.
- NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim called the film a work that finds 'the perfect tone to tell the story of how we arrived at the AI precipice' with 'clear-eyed horror, dark humor, and a sense of existential urgency.'
- Simon Rich wrote the screenplay, with the festival billing the film as Guadagnino's 'biggest swing yet.'
Why it matters: The Amazon drop-to-Neon pivot in a single month is the real story: a studio shelved a finished film about OpenAI's CEO to protect its $50 billion AWS deal with the same company. Guadagnino's fourth NYFF premiere gives 'Artificial' a major festival launchpad with the director and cast in attendance at Alice Tully Hall.
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