Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, the film about OpenAI’s boardroom crisis that lost its studio over the summer, has its world premiere Monday night at the New York Film Festival. The screening at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall is followed by a Q&A with Guadagnino and stars Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro and Ike Barinholtz. Screenwriter Simon Rich joins them. Two more festival showings follow, on October 6 and October 11. Neon opens the film in select theaters on Christmas Day, with a wider rollout in January, and a London Film Festival stop is also planned.
Garfield plays Sam Altman during the five days in November 2023 when OpenAI’s board fired him and then reinstated him. Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who led the ouster, and Barbaro plays chief technology officer Mira Murati. Barinholtz portrays Elon Musk, and the ensemble includes Mark Rylance, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd and Billie Lourd. Damon Albarn wrote songs and the score.
Amazon MGM originally backed the project and then walked away in June, saying it would be better served by a different studio. The decision came months after Amazon announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI, and it drew heavy criticism across the industry. Netflix, A24 and Focus Features also passed before Neon acquired global rights.
The festival slot surprised observers, since earlier reports said the film would skip the autumn circuit. It is Guadagnino’s fifth film at the festival, after Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All, Queer and last year’s opener After the Hunt. Festival director Dennis Lim praised the film’s tone, saying it tells the story of how the world reached the edge of the AI age with horror, dark humor and urgency.
Garfield has kept his distance from his subject. “I don’t know Sam Altman. I’ve never met him,” he told Esquire. Altman is still running the company, which gives the film unusual risk for a biopic.
Early marketing leans on menace. The trailer shows Garfield’s Altman narrating that the characters “opened Pandora’s box together,” and one outlet likened its mood to a horror movie. No reviews have appeared yet, and first reactions from the premiere will shape the awards conversation heading into December.
