Neon has released the first teaser trailer for Artificial, Luca Guadagninos dramatization of the OpenAI leadership crisis, with Andrew Garfield stepping into the role of CEO Sam Altman. The clip marks the first public footage from the film, which Neon plans to open in select U.S. theaters on Christmas Day 2026 after festival stops this autumn.
In the teaser, Garfield’s Altman moves through a sleek compound that opens into a vault lined with weapons behind blue-tinted glass, narrating the creation of ChatGPT and the scale of what comes next. “We opened Pandora’s Box together. The future is inevitable, he says, before the footage builds toward a charged confrontation with OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, played by Anora breakout Yura Borisov. Coverage from Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap frames the film as less a cradle-to-boardroom biopic and more a focused account of the November 2023 firing-and-reinstatement saga that briefly upended the company at the center of the AI race.
Written by Simon Rich and directed by Guadagnino, Artificial also features Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Mark Rylance, Ike Barinholtz (as Elon Musk), Zosia Mamet, Cooper Koch and Billie Lourd. Original music is by Damon Albarn. After Amazon MGM Studios developed and financed the project, then stepped away from distribution in June amid its own OpenAI partnership headlines, Neon picked up the film and has positioned it for awards-season attention.
The theatrical path is now locked: world premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5 at Alice Tully Hall, a BFI London Film Festival gala on October 11, limited Christmas Day release, and a wider rollout in January 2027. For cinephiles tracking Guadagnino after Challengers and Queer, Artificial is the next high-profile swing — a cold corporate thriller dressed as festival bait, arriving just as the real-world AI debate refuses to cool down.
Mark it: Artificial premieres at NYFF on October 5 and hits select theaters Christmas Day.
