Sam Altman Has Entered His Villain Era: Watch the Trailer for Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, the Film About the OpenAI Founder

The first trailer for Luca Guadagnino's Artificial has arrived, and the internet has already decided it wants to see the film. Set around the extraordinary five-day period in November 2023 when Sam Altman was fired as OpenAI CEO before being dramatically reinstated, the film turns one of Silicon Valley's strangest corporate implosions into glossy, unsettling cinema. (Variety) Andrew Garfield plays Altman, with Anora breakout Yura Borisov as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. Cooper Hoffman plays Greg Brockman, while Ike Barinholtz appears as Elon Musk. Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Chris O'Dowd and Mark Rylance also feature. (People.com) The trailer is already generating comparisons to The Social Network , but Guadagnino appears to be going somewhere considerably stranger. There is something almost horror-movie-like about the footage: billion-dollar technology, existential questions about humanity and a group of extremely powerful people behaving as though the fate of civilisation is being decided inside a Silicon Valley boardroom. Online, viewers are particularly fascinated by Garfield's transformation, with some joking that he gives the fictional Altman considerably more charisma than the real one. Others are already asking whether this is going to be an Altman 'hit piece'. (Reddit) And then there is the extraordinary question of whether Altman himself approved any of this. There is currently no evidence that he did. In fact, Garfield has repeatedly stressed that he has never met Altman. He built the performance from Simon Rich's screenplay, interviews, research and court transcripts rather than personal access to his subject. Garfield has also admitted that he is 'really scared' of the backlash involved in portraying one of the most powerful people in technology. (The Independent) That makes the film's journey even more intriguing. Amazon MGM dropped the nearly finished movie earlier this year, shortly after its enormous financial partnership with OpenAI. Amazon denied that the two events were connected, but reports suggested the film presents a critical portrait of Altman. Neon subsequently acquired the worldwide rights. (Los Angeles Times) With Guadagnino behind the camera, Damon Albarn providing the music and Garfield embodying one of the defining—and most controversial—figures of the AI revolution, Artificial suddenly feels less like a conventional tech biopic and more like a cinematic referendum on who gets to control the future. It arrives in cinemas on Christmas Day before expanding in January.