Amazon Drops Sam Altman Biopic Amid OpenAI Partnership

Amazon MGM has stopped production on its nearly finished film about OpenAI founder Sam Altman. The movie, titled "Artificial," was set to star Andrew Garfield. Here's the thing: Amazon has become heavily involved with Altman's company. They committed to a $50 billion partnership deal in February to expand OpenAI's use of Amazon Web Services. A $38 billion cloud computing deal was also signed last year. Amazon is now looking for a new studio to release the film. Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino directed "Artificial," which focuses on Altman's brief firing and rehiring as OpenAI head in 2023. What's interesting is a draft of the script reportedly portrays Altman as a schemer. One computer scientist in the script describes him as "one of the most manipulative people on the planet." The film also stars Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, who co-founded OpenAI. Jason Schwartzman, Mark Rylance, Zosia Mamet, and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk also co-star. Amazon isn't stating its reasons for dropping the film. However, the company would have a conflict of interest in how it portrays a major industry partner. This move could impact future projects between major studios and subjects of their films, especially when business partnerships are involved.