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Silicon Valley doesn’t just want to add more artificial intelligence to the moviemaking process—it seems to want some control over what Hollywood says about A.I. altogether. Look at what’s been happening with Artificial, the Luca Guadagnino–directed movie about OpenAI’s failed attempt in late 2023 to oust CEO Sam Altman, played here by Andrew Garfield. The film was initially a tough sell: Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. reportedly refused the script in 2024 out of concern over the portrayals of Altman and Elon Musk (played by Ike Barinholtz). So Amazon MGM Studios became the surprising benefactor, offering Guadagnino a $40 million budget—the same amount of cash it spent to acquire Melania—along with a 2027 release date. That is, until an early cut was screened for Amazon MGM chief Mike Hopkins, who subsequently decided to drop the whole thing last month. The company offered no real reason for the about-face, other than a public statement declaring in part, “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio.”
A different studio finally did step in this week. Neon, the indie production house behind such modern classics as Parasite and Anatomy of a Fall, said on Tuesday it would take Artificial from Amazon MGM, after weeks of rejections by the likes of Netflix and A24. But this isn’t a Hollywood redemption saga. Rather, it’s perhaps the most blatant example yet of the chill enveloping the film industry as Big Tech increasingly consolidates its control—both by injecting more A.I. tools into the creative process and by owning the major distributors outright. The more the traditional studios get taken over and reimagined by the tech world, the fewer stories we’ll see greenlit and created for the masses.
Take another look at the firms that dismissed Artificial; almost all of them are connected to the tech at the story’s center. Paramount, on the verge of acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, is financing that expansion in no small part with gobs of money from Oracle, the software giant that’s established multiple data center deals with OpenAI. Netflix is so psyched about generative software that it’s spent the year acquiring an A.I. production studio, launching a different studio for A.I.-animated shorts, and re-creating Gene Wilder’s voice for a Willy Wonka–themed game show. (And yes, Netflix has previously worked with OpenAI to rework its search and recommendation engines.) A24 is still staring down floods of digital rage from filmgoers upset by its $75 million initiative with Google DeepMind to research the utility of A.I. tools for filmmakers.
And then there’s Amazon itself, owner of MGM Studios since 2022. While the multitrillion-dollar corporation has been in the A.I. game a while now, it only started getting into business with OpenAI recently, as the latter sought to gradually sever some of its long-standing ties to Microsoft. First came a $38 billion November deal in which Sam Altman’s firm agreed to buy computing capacity from Amazon Web Services over the next seven years; next, a February expansion of this partnership, where Amazon agreed to take a $50 billion stake in OpenAI as long as the latter agreed to spend $100 billion on AWS chips over the next eight years; finally, in April, Amazon gained the ability to offer OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex models on its own A.I. platform.
Essentially, right after Artificial got approved and started filming, its production house started building a long-term, highly lucrative partnership with the tech firm that provides the backdrop for the movie’s story, through a series of cooperative agreements where Amazon gets way more money from OpenAI than it gives in turn. Regardless of whether this relationship actually influenced the decision to drop the film, it’s undoubtedly important context for Amazon MGM’s handling of the project. And even though the cost of working with Luca Guadagnino—who’d previously done well for Amazon MGM with acclaimed hits like Challengers—came out to a fraction of Amazon’s OpenAI investment, the studio ultimately chose not to move forward.
Amazon might have lost a lot of money on the similarly budgeted Melania, but it got to suck up to President Donald Trump and put itself up for government contracts in the process. Going through with Artificial just meant potentially pissing off Sam Altman, who’s been pitching the case that A.I. is good for Hollywood even as he repeatedly clashes with celebrity heavyweights like Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy O. Harris. Even more important than preserving Altman’s feelings: ensuring that that $100 billion check cashes. Also: keeping that $50 billion stake intact for whenever OpenAI goes public and gifts investors with flush new cash from open trading.
Guadagnino, for his part, didn’t seem too surprised by Amazon’s chickening out. But he still recognizes the stakes of allowing the tech-and-A.I. executives to shape what gets put out and what doesn’t. “It is completely changing the face, not just of society in terms of consumption and how we relate to these tools, but the very face of the identity of a place like the United States and the entire world, with the rise of this small oligarchy that wields truly radical control,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
“Radical control” is right; the techies are literally consolidating the entertainment sector and maintaining outright control over deals and output. Apple TV+ forbade Jon Stewart from hosting a Biden administration regulator on his show; Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison already took over one fabled studio and censored parts of its TV division while also making a bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery. The more tech money rules these creative industries, the fewer truly critical, probing projects will be approved, as the oligarchs on top do their best to keep things copacetic with one another, whether for the sake of friendship or business.
So, Artificial has thankfully found a new home, but this saga may just be the beginning. As indie studios like Neon get increasingly crowded out of a tech-controlled Hollywood or find themselves compromised via lucrative A.I. deals, where can tech-critical filmmakers hope to go next?
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