Luca Guadagnino’s genre-blending movie about the evils of artificial intelligence (and one of its fathers, Sam Altman) had a triumphant U.K. premiere at the London Film Festival on Sunday. The director, standing beside key cast members Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov, received thunderous applause at Royal Festival Hall. The British event followed the world premiere of “Artificial” a week earlier at the New York Film Festival.
It was a make-or-break moment for a project plagued by scandal after Amazon MGM punted the film off its summer slate. Worse was what came after: an odious whisper campaign saying the film stank (anonymous sources dismissed it as only worthy of a streaming release, according to a July report). But the Big Apple swallowed the film with rapture.
The title has a 96% Fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, representing the highest score of Guadagnino’s career across 11 feature film releases. Garfield has been catapulted to the front of the best supporting actor race, thanks to a performance that delivers “a masterclass in diabolical villainy,” according to another review. The notices, the standing ovations, the awards buzz — all of it represents a stunning reversal of fortune for Guadagnino after the Amazon debacle in June.
It was highly uncommon, in Hollywood terms, for even a tech-owned content studio to kill a project it had cradled since infancy. Neon rescued the movie with a global rights deal shortly after the Amazon rift. Global press almost unanimously noted that the decision to jettison the movie came only three months after Amazon signed a significant partnership with Altman’s OpenAI (including a $50 billion investment in the company).
But, per Variety’s sources, the writing is on the wall. Nothing was wrong with “Artificial,” and the response underlines the dubiousness of Amazon’s decision to drop it. The exec didn’t just raise an eyebrow at Amazon MGM, but at other legacy distributors who were in the mix to take the project before Neon won out.
In fact, the critical consensus is that “Artificial” — not Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” which debuted last weekend via Sony Pictures — is a worthy spiritual successor to David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” It’s hard to imagine Amazon not being pleased with this response had it kept “Artificial.” Interestingly, Amazon’s headaches at the intersection of talent and AI are not exclusive to the Guadagnino movie. At New York Comic Con last weekend, actor Nicolas Cage made waves when he disclosed that he refused to sign a document permitting the studio to use AI in and around his likeness on its now-canceled original series “Spider-Noir.” “I am not an AI-friendly actor. I’m not a member of their club.
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