The first trailer for Artificial landed this week, giving the world its first real look at Andrew Garfield playing openly gay OpenAI chief Sam Altman, and the internet had a lot of feelings about it.
What's in the Trailer
The footage centers on the chaotic week in November 2023 when OpenAI's board abruptly fired Altman, only to bring him back days later as employees revolted. Garfield, in character, delivers a line that's already circulating widely online: "We opened Pandora's box together. The future is inevitable. Countries will fall. Industries are gonna collapse." It's a chillier, more ominous tone than viewers might expect from a movie about a Silicon Valley executive, and Out's early reaction called the performance downright creepy.
Eagle-eyed viewers also spotted something else: a party scene at Altman's house populated with shirtless men in shorts. Content creator Matt Bernstein said he'd actually attended a gathering there in 2021, before Altman was a household name.
I can tell you this scene is an extremely accurate depiction.
Matt Bernstein
The Real Crisis Behind the Script
The events the film compresses into two hours were genuinely wild in real life. Altman's board ousted him abruptly, citing concerns over his candor and how he'd handled AI safety issues. What followed was chaos: nearly the entire OpenAI staff signed a letter demanding his reinstatement and the board's resignation, threatening to walk out en masse to a new AI division Microsoft had just announced it would build for them.
Altman was back in the CEO chair within days, an outcome that turned a corporate boardroom fight into one of the defining tech stories of the ChatGPT era. That's the drama Guadagnino, best known for Call Me By Your Name and Queer, is now bringing to screens with a script that early reports suggest doesn't flatter its subject.
Why Amazon Walked
Amazon MGM originally developed and financed Artificial, reportedly for around $40 million, before quietly pulling it from its release calendar after test screenings. The studio's public explanation to Deadline was diplomatic: respect for Guadagnino, a wish to find the film "a new home." It didn't explain why. The timing raised eyebrows, since Amazon separately announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI earlier this year. Neon has since picked up distribution, setting the film for a Christmas Day release.
MQ's Take
There's something worth sitting with here beyond the casting gossip: a mainstream studio film is putting an openly gay tech billionaire, who married his husband in 2024 and became a father in 2025, at the center of one of the biggest business stories of the decade, without making his sexuality the plot. That's its own kind of progress, even if the portrait being painted of Altman himself is unflattering. Garfield has been upfront that he's nervous about playing
Sources: Queerty, PinkNews, Out
Cover photo: Colleen Sturtevant, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
