Neon Releases Artificial Teaser With Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman

Neon has released the first teaser for Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s film starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman. The preview turns OpenAI’s 2023 leadership crisis into a tense corporate drama while placing it inside a much broader warning about the consequences of AI.

The teaser gives Garfield’s Altman an ominous entrance. He descends through a mansion into a basement containing dozens of machine guns, then predicts that countries will fall and industries will collapse. The film’s central historical episode is more specific: Altman’s abrupt firing and reinstatement as OpenAI chief executive amid a dispute over who would control the technology.

A five-day crisis, expanded into a larger story

Altman was reinstated five days after his firing, according to Variety. But the teaser reaches beyond that episode: it indicates that Artificial will also depict OpenAI’s creation and the launch of ChatGPT. The result is a film that uses one leadership rupture as the spine for a wider account of the company’s rise and the stakes it assigns to its technology.

A troubled route to the screen

Artificial reaches audiences after a distributor change. Amazon MGM dropped the film in June, saying it would be better served by another distributor; the decision followed Amazon’s announced partnership with OpenAI. Neon announced its acquisition on June 30 and added the project to its awards-season slate.

The cast extends the leadership story beyond Altman. Yura Borisov plays OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, Monica Barbaro plays former chief technology officer and interim chief executive Mira Murati, and Ike Barinholtz plays co-founder Elon Musk. Artificial is scheduled to premiere at the New York Film Festival in October before Neon’s U.S. theatrical release on December 25.

The trailer’s contrast is its defining move: a real struggle over governance becomes a thriller about national and industrial disruption. That gives the film a clear dramatic scale, while signaling that Artificial is a cinematic interpretation of OpenAI’s history.