Neon Nabs Sam Altman Biopic: OpenAI Crisis Film Finds Home

Neon is finalizing a deal to acquire "Artificial," a biographical film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. This comes after Amazon MGM Studios withdrew from the project. The film, directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk. It dramatizes the November 2023 OpenAI board crisis. The movie is budgeted at about $40 million and is nearly complete. Amazon MGM Studios had previously held worldwide distribution rights but dropped the film days after announcing a $50 billion partnership with OpenAI. Other studios like Netflix and A24 also passed on the film. People who have seen it describe Altman as deeply untrustworthy and Musk as highly dislikable. What's interesting is this distribution saga highlights a tension: studios entering large commercial AI partnerships may face conflicts when holding content critical of those tech companies. This situation is an early, high-profile example of this dynamic for the AI industry.