Andrew Garfield reunites with Silicon Valley drama in Artificial, playing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino’s new film. Focusing on the five chaotic days in November 2023 when Altman was ousted and reinstated, the movie blends corporate coup, AI anxiety and boardroom intrigue, with Neon positioning it as a major awards-season contender after Amazon exited the project.
Jesse Eisenberg might have said goodbye to playing tech billionaires, but his The Social Network costar Andrew Garfield is nowhere near giving up. Sixteen years after playing Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook cofounder who got squeezed out of his own company, Garfield is back to Silicon Valley, this time as Sam Altman, the infamous OpenAI chief who brings you dystopian AI news every second day. The film is called Artificial, it's directed by Luca Guadagnino, and Neon just dropped the official teaser. Check it out below.
Artificial isn't your cradle-to-boardroom Altman biopic (just like The Social Network), Guadagnino and screenwriter Simon Rich have narrowed the lens to five days in November 2023, when OpenAI's board abruptly removed Altman as CEO, installed CTO Mira Murati as interim chief, and pandemonium erupt till Altman walked back in five days later. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's cofounder and then chief scientist, was reportedly at the centre of the coup, and supposed to play the antagonist in the movie.
The teaser trailer opens on Garfield's Altman strolling through what looks like a plush campus before the floor drops into a vault lined with guns and doomsday supplies. Over the visuals, his voiceover walks through a generic ChatGPT origin story. This is followed by an ominous string of "We opened Pandora's box together", "countries will fall", “industries will collapse” and the usual things you’d expect an AI reckoning to bring.
Andrew Garfield plays the lead role as Sam Altman, OpenAI's cofounder and CEO. Elon Musk is played by Ike Barinholtz, Monica Barbaro is Mira Murati, the briefly-installed interim CEO. Yura Borisov, fresh off Anora, is Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who moved against Altman.
Other cast members include Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, OpenAI's board chairman, Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton, the AI pioneer known as the field's reluctant conscience, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O'Dowd, Zosia Mamet, Billie Lourd and Cooper Koch.
Amazon MGM Studios developed Artificial and was set to release it worldwide. Then, this June, Amazon dropped the project after the company signed a reported fifty-billion-dollar investment and partnership deal with OpenAI. After all, depicting the messiest chapter in the history of a company you've just poured fifty billion dollars into is, understandably, not a great look for a shareholder call.
Neon picked the film up almost immediately and slotted it into its awards-season lineup. Puck's Matthew Belloni has claimed to have read an early draft of the script, reporting that both Musk and Altman would likely hate their portrayals, with Musk at one point labelled a "dictator."
Artificial has its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5, screening at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. It opens in limited US theatres on December 25, 2026, with Neon planning a wider international release from January 2027. No India release date has been confirmed yet.
Is Artificial based on a true story?
Yes. It dramatises the real November 2023 removal and reinstatement of Sam Altman as OpenAI's CEO.
Who plays Sam Altman in Artificial?
Andrew Garfield, previously known for playing Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network, plays Sam Altman in Artificial.
When does Artificial release?
It premieres at the New York Film Festival on October 5, 2026, then opens in US theatres on December 25, 2026, before expanding internationally from January 2027. No India release date has been confirmed yet.