Neon Studio has unveiled the first teaser trailer for the film “Artificial,” directed by Luca Guadagnino, which chronicles a pivotal conflict within OpenAI’s leadership in November 2023. In the movie, Andrew Garfield portrays Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, while Russian actor Yura Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever, one of the company’s co-founders and key AI researchers.
The film is based on real events from November 2023, when OpenAI’s board unexpectedly dismissed CEO Sam Altman, stating he had “not been consistently frank” in communications with the board. This decision triggered immediate turmoil, with more than 700 employees signing an open letter demanding Altman’s return and threatening to leave the company. Microsoft later indicated its willingness to recruit Altman for a new AI initiative.
Within days, OpenAI’s board reversed its decision and reinstated Altman as CEO—a move analysts have labeled one of Silicon Valley’s most significant corporate crises.
The film, written by Simon Rich (former Saturday Night Live writer) and produced by David Heyman (of the Harry Potter franchise), adopts a psychological thriller approach. The teaser features Garfield’s character reflecting on ChatGPT’s launch and acknowledging humanity has “opened Pandora’s box,” while depicting tense internal conflicts and preparations for potential global disasters.
Ilya Sutskever, born in Nizhny Novgorod, moved to Israel as a child and later studied in Canada under Jeffrey Hinton. He co-created the AlexNet neural network that revolutionized computer vision in 2012 and became a key figure at OpenAI. During the November 2023 crisis, Sutskever supported the dismissal of Altman but later publicly regretted his role and joined efforts to restore him.
The film is set for release after its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, following an initial production deal with Amazon MGM Studios that ended in summer 2026 when Neon Studio acquired the rights.
