“Artificial” star Andrew Garfield is weighing on Amazon MGM Studios’ decision to drop the Luca Guadagnino-directed film about Sam Altman and OpenAI.
“I was and I wasn’t [surprised],” the Oscar winner told me Wednesday while promoting his new movie “The Magic Faraway Tree.” “I think there are certain things that fit certain places and don’t fit other places and they [Amazon] were nothing but supportive and nothing but yencouraging while we were making the film. Luca has a really great relationship with them and I’ve developed a lovely relationship with them as well. I’m grateful that they’ve helped the film to find the home that it was meant to find.”
The Simon Rich-scripted film chronicles OpenAI’s firing and rehiring of Altman, played by Garfield, in 2023.
Popular on Variety
Neon acquired the nearly-completed $40 million film after Amazon MGM Studios announced that it believed it would “be better served if it were released by a different studio.” Amazon’s decision came just months after the company signed a major partnership with OpenAI, including a $50 billion investment, and less than a year after Altman attended Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s wedding.
The cast also includes Monica Barbaro, Yura Borisov, Mark Rylance, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd, Cooper Koch and Billie Lourd.
Neon has committed to launching an awards campaign for “Artificial” to enter this year’s Oscar race.
Garfield said he didn’t reach out to Altman as part of his research and preparation for the role.
“I wouldn’t know how to. I don’t I don’t have his number. I don’t have his email,” Garfield said. “But I’m sure that he’d able to reach me if he wants to. I’d be very excited and curious to talk with him if he would ever want to do that.”
Not that there wasn’t enough public material to draw from. “He’s very very documented,” Garfield said. “There are lots of interviews. There’s lots of visuals and audio and reporting. I, of course, would have loved and still would love to meet Sam. But I’m playing a version of the character that was written in the script, and I think that while you want to be as truthful to that as you can, you’re never going to understand anyone ever fully ever anyway. We’re all so complicated and deeply layered, and I think that Mr. Altman is probably no exception.”
I also caught up with Hoffman, whose role in “Artificial” has not been revealed, on Tuesday night at the Los Angeles premiere of his new raunchy Gregg Araki movie “I Want Your Sex.” The actor said he wasn’t surprised Amazon pulled out of “Artificial.”
“I’m shocked they picked it up in the first place,” Hoffman said. “I was like this feels like you are all in like, I don’t know…I don’t know who’s running everything. When they dropped it, it was kinda like, ‘Oh, yeah, that kinda actually makes sense,’ but then it got picked up by Neon, which I’m so happy about. I love Neon and I couldn’t be more happy.”