Hot Potato
While promoting his new movie, The Magic Faraway Tree, Andrew Garfield would finally comment on the situation surrounding his upcoming film Artificial. It was recently reported that Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming drama, Artificial, was abruptly dropped from its initial distributor — Amazon MGM — given that Amazon announced plans to invest a whopping $50 billion in OpenAI back in February. Directed by Guadagnino, the film stars Andrew Garfield as OpenAI founder Sam Altman, with the movie reportedly serving as a The Social Network-style drama about the rise of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. Altman is said to be depicted in a non-sympathetic light. After the movie was set adrift by the studio, the indie company NEON would step in and pick up Artificial and announced that it would submit it for awards consideration.
Garfield Comments
Variety would catch up with Andrew Garfield as he promotes his new film and the actor would address his reaction to the situation. When asked if he was surprised about Amazon dropping the film, he replied,
I was and I wasn’t. I think there are certain things that fit certain places and don’t fit other places and they [Amazon] were nothing but supportive and nothing but encouraging while we were making the film. Luca has a really great relationship with them and I’ve developed a lovely relationship with them as well. I’m grateful that they’ve helped the film to find the home that it was meant to find.”sponsored content
Variety would also catch up with Cooper Hoffman on the red carpet of I Want Your Sex and asked him if he had been nervous if the movie wouldn’t get picked up after Amazon dropped it. Hoffman responded,
I’m shocked they picked it up in the first place. I was like, this feels like you are all in like, I don’t know … I don’t know who’s running everything. When they dropped it, it was kinda like, ‘Oh, yeah, that kinda actually makes sense,’ but then it got picked up by Neon, which I’m so happy about. I love Neon and I couldn’t be more happy.”
NEON deal
So, what kind of deal did NEON get with the acquisition of Artificial? According to Page Six, their sources have said that NEON only agreed to the deal as it includes a no-money guarantee, which could be a big blow to a star-studded, topical film, whose price is said to be around the $40 million to $50 million range. However, as taboo as the film is being viewed by studios, it didn’t look like it had much to leverage for a sale.
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