Entertainment

Guadagnino's Sam Altman Dramedy Artificial Premieres at New York Film Festival

Jonah VillalbaPublished 12m ago2 min readBased on 5 sources
Guadagnino's Sam Altman Dramedy Artificial Premieres at New York Film Festival
Photo by Ariela Ortiz-Barrantes / CC BY-SA 4.0

Luca Guadagnino's Sam Altman film has reached the screen.

Artificial, a biographical dramedy about the OpenAI leadership crisis, held its premiere on Monday night, Oct. 5, at the New York Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Guadagnino directs from a script by Simon Rich.

The film is billed as a biographical dramedy, a true-story mix of drama and comedy, about the November 2023 OpenAI boardroom crisis when co-founder Sam Altman was fired and then re-hired, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The firing lasted days. The film took much longer.

Andrew Garfield stars as Altman, with Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The wider cast includes Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O'Dowd and Mark Rylance, according to Variety.

The route to release has been complicated. Artificial was developed at Amazon MGM Studios before Guadagnino was hired to direct it, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Amazon MGM Studios dropped the project in June 2026, according to The Guardian.

Neon then picked it up. Neon is an independent distributor, a releasing company that operates outside the major studios, according to AP. The deal involved no upfront payment but a $15 million marketing spend commitment, money pledged to advertise the release, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Artificial is set to open in theatres on Dec. 25, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That is Christmas Day, one of the busiest dates on the cinema calendar.

First reactions were reported on Oct. 5, 2026, according to Yahoo. Early responses described the film as provocative and downright horrifying, with one reaction calling it Guadagnino's best film in a decade, according to Yahoo.

What makes this stand out is the speed. A boardroom fight from November 2023 is already a Christmas release with a major cast. For fans, this means a tech story still fresh in memory will now play out as ensemble drama.

Related Articles