Luca Guadagnino has expressed optimism that his upcoming film Artificial will find a new distributor after Amazon MGM dropped the project.
Speaking on the Italian news show Otto e Mezzo, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker said he could not comment extensively on the situation surrounding the film’s release but suggested that the film could follow a path similar to productions that found new distributors after being dropped.
“I was reading a great article yesterday recalling how, back in 2003, CBS cancelled a major drama series about the Reagans due to pressure from Republicans,” he said. “It was actually cancelled, though it later aired on a smaller channel”.
Guadagnino said his concerns extend beyond artificial intelligence itself, focusing instead on its wider societal implications.
“The issue isn’t artificial intelligence itself,” he said. “What matters most to me is how people are completely changing the face, not just of society — in terms of consumption habits and how we interact with these tools — but the very face of the identity of a place like the United States and the entire world”.
The director, who shot parts of the film in San Francisco, said the city was “a wonderful city, one of the great, distinguished U.S. cities, Alfred Hitchcock’s city — a place of great beauty but also great despair, with so many homeless people, so many people living under the influence of fentanyl, while these wonderful, silent, self-driving cars glided past them”.
“That, to me, is the perfect image to illustrate the theme. It is a disturbing image — more than just disturbing,” added Guadagnino.
Last week, Deadline reported that Amazon MGM will no longer distribute Artificial, with the filmmakers now screening the project for other potential distributors.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced a USD 50 billion investment in OpenAI.
Directed by Guadagnino from a screenplay by Saturday Night Live alum Simon Rich, Artificial explores the events surrounding OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's brief dismissal and reinstatement in 2023.
The film stars Andrew Garfield as Altman, alongside Mark Rylance, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Billie Lourd, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Cooper Hoffman and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk.