The First Trailer for the Sam Altman Movie Is Here — Here's What to Know

The first trailer for Artificial, a movie about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman directed by Luca Guadagnino, appeared on YouTube on September 8, 2026. It gives audiences their first look at Andrew Garfield playing Altman and confirms a Christmas Day 2026 release in theaters through distributor Neon.

The movie focuses on what happened in November 2023, when Altman was fired from OpenAI by the company's board of directors and then got his job back five days later after employees protested and investors pushed for his return. The trailer highlights Altman's time as CEO and raises the question of who really controls artificial intelligence, following the rise of OpenAI and its popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

The cast includes Andrew Garfield as Altman, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, Cooper Hoffman, and Jason Schwartzman. Guadagnino both directed and co-produced the film.

Getting the movie to theaters has not been simple. Amazon MGM Studios was originally supposed to distribute it, with a planned release in early 2027, but pulled out in June 2026. According to Variety, that decision came after Amazon had put $50 billion into OpenAI, which seemed to create a conflict: the studio's business relationship with the AI company made it uncomfortable releasing a movie about that company's CEO.

After Amazon MGM left, Neon picked up the global rights. Before Neon signed on, Netflix, A24, and Focus Features all turned the project down, as Variety reported. That many rejections from major distributors suggests the film's subject matter and how it reportedly portrays its key figures made distributors nervous.

Those portrayals, according to the same Variety reporting, are said to be unflattering. The film is rumored to depict Altman as a pathological liar and to show Musk, played by Barinholtz, in a highly negative light. How closely the finished film matches those early descriptions is not yet clear, but the trailer's tone, which Engadget called "damn creepy," suggests Guadagnino is not going for a calm, straightforward corporate story.

The film will premiere at the New York Film Festival before its wide release, as Variety reported on September 1. That festival spot positions Artificial as a serious, awards-focused film rather than just a commercial release, fitting with Neon's track record with films like Parasite and Anatomy of a Fall.

The broader context here is worth noting for anyone who has watched the tech industry over the years. Hollywood has a long tradition of making quick biopics about living people, and they are often financially successful even when they take liberties with the facts. What makes Artificial different is how recent its subject is. The November 2023 crisis at OpenAI happened less than three years ago. The company at the center of the film is right now shaping how artificial intelligence gets used in businesses and consumer products, and its CEO is still making decisions about AI releases, safety policies, and company structure that affect millions of people. A movie dramatizing events that are still unfolding is unusual even by Hollywood's standards.

The distribution shuffle is also a story about how tech money and entertainment have become tangled together. Amazon's $50 billion investment in OpenAI is large enough to change how a company makes decisions. When a studio's parent company has a financial stake in the firm whose CEO is being portrayed on screen, deciding whether to release that film is no longer just an artistic or business choice. That Amazon dropped the project after the investment closed, and that several other major distributors also declined, leaves room for reasonable speculation about whether those companies' ties to the AI world influenced their decisions. Without direct statements from the parties involved, that remains an educated guess.

What the trailer makes clear is that Guadagnino is telling the OpenAI story as one about power and accountability, not about technology itself. The film's title, Artificial, works on several levels, but the teaser's focus on who controls AI suggests the director cares less about how the technology works and more about the human decisions behind it. For people who work in technology, that approach will either feel like a recognizable summary of real tensions in the AI industry or like an oversimplification of complicated debates about how AI should be governed.

Neon releases Artificial in the United States on December 25, 2026.