There’s genuine concern about “Artificial.”
That’s the movie made by Luca Guadagnino about Sam Altman and Chat GPT. “Artificial” is all locked and ready to go, but Amazon/MGM says they won’t release it.
How could they? Jeff Bezos is in business with Altman to the tune of $50 billion. And let’s not forget the $75 mil Bezos lavished on the flop Melania Trump documentary just to curry favor with our bloated orange maniac.
The movie, according to sources including Matt Belloni of Puck Newsletter, goes hard on Altman and on a lot of Bezos pals like Elon Musk.
The screenplay by Simon Rich — son of former New York Times power couple Frank Rich and Alex Witchel — was flagged a year ago in media circles that it could cause an uproar. But there was also a story intentionally planted that it was “boring” to throw off the depicted billionaires.
Well, Amazon/MGM has released a lot of boring movies, so that’s not the reason they’ve dumped it. The problem is that Warner Bros. and Paramount passed on the screenplay a long time ago, before they were corporate cousins owned by the censorious Ellisons. So you can scratch those two studios for taking it off Amazon’s hands.
That leaves Universal or Disney, one of which would have to take the flak from Altman, Musk and others in the film that tells the story of the time Altman left the company AI and then returned. As much as Aaron Sorkin is preparing the sequel to “The Social Network,” this movie sounds like it’s really the next chapter.
Are we surprised about Bezos saying ‘no’ to “Artificial”? I’m actually surprised it got made, to tell you the truth. Even with a sterling cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, and so on, “Artificial” should have thrown up red flags for Bezos immediately. After all, he’s rearranged the Washington Post to take out its bite. His movie studio certainly isn’t going to be allowed to cause trouble for his real billion dollar business.
Puck says CAA is handling the screenings for new potential buyers. That’s interesting because one of the actors in the film is Billie Lourd, daughter of CAA chief Bryan Lourd (her mother was Carrie Fisher). So CAA has incentive to find “Artificial” a new home, one that can afford its $50 million price tag and also be willing to promote it at film festivals and for awards.
Will this movie ever be released? Or will it be crushed by the system? There’s a lot here we don’t know or isn’t being said. So hang on, or ask ChatGPT what happens next.
