Amazon is actually much more reasonable than the headline makes it seem:
> “We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” a spokesperson for Amazon said to Variety in a statement. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”
Well, yeah, I kind of agree. Amazon probably shouldn't be the one producing the film, and it sounds like they're working to get the rights sold to someone else.
The headline also sucks because "after" means "months after with no evidence that it's related". It's just clickbait all around.
Amazon dropped the movie after announcing a partnership with OpenAI. The headline clearly communicates the only demonstrable action Amazon has taken.
Whether they're actually going to sell it is TBD. Until they do, they've taken no concrete action except cancel it. I don't think this article is clickbait.
What makes you think they've canceled it? Did you read past the headline?
What should they have done here — keep the movie despite the obvious conflict of interest? Be more secretive about the fact they're trying to separate so no one can write articles like these?
If they did the right thing, it would look exactly like this. And I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie.
> I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie
I take the opposing viewpoint. They don’t have to “refuse” to give away the movie rights, they can just… not do it. Pitchforks in three months or is that still reasonable? Six months? Two years?
I don’t believe a word they say until I see action that backs it up.
Look at their distribution of the Melania movie. It was very obviously a money losing favour to Trump. But they’d never admit as such because why would they? And what do I gain by taking them at their word that it’s a wonderful piece of film deserving of the money spent on it when that’s obviously untrue?
You should probably also take the opposing views of corporate media, especially a tabloid rag like the independent, and assume their intent is to foment the maximum amount of outrage possible in order to drive ad impressions.
What on earth are you on about? The article is referring to Variety, which refers to Puck as having broken the story. Are Variety, the renowned trade publication, and Puck, an independent and journalist-owned publication also "tabloid rags"?
Why do you agree that Amazon shouldn't be the one producing the film if you don't believe there's any evidence them dropping it is related to the partnership?
1. Because Amazon is a bigtech corp making a film about another bigtech corp. Plenty of conflicts of interest here (in either direction).
2. Regardless of whether it is or isn't related, implying they are without any evidence is just speculation. There's a reason they didn't say "months after" in the headline, even though it would be much more informative and much less confusing!
You also seem to conflate "there's evidence for" and "you believe that". Those are very distinct statements. "you don't believe there's evidence for X" doesn't make sense here — I said "there is no evidence for X in the article", that's a fact, not a belief.
I am quite certain that I am being downvoted because there are people who no longer care about the quality of arguments and think that a poor argument in support of their cause is a good thing.
The bulk of downvotes I have received fall into two categories. One is from people who disagree with me, and the other is from people who believe that my critique of a bad argument means that I believe the opposite to the conclusion of the argument.
The latter is the one that bugs me more. Because I feel that a bad argument in support of a conclusion that I believe is damaging to the understanding of the conclusion because it represents a refuge that anyone arguing the opposite can cling to in order to undermine good arguments. They can legitimately ask "Why should I believe your good argument, if you express a similar degree of support for an obviously flawed argument" It signals that the position is held because of allegiance, not because it is correct.
Even scarier is that it raises the spectre of people passionately advocating for a position when they themselves do not respect the opinion, but simply acknowledge that this is the position of their allegiance.
There is experimental evidence for this on both sides of American politics with people being tested flipping their opinions on identical policies just by presenting them as being the favoured opinion of a different side.
There is clearly a church-and-state issue with tech platforms owning studios. On the other hand, they have the cash. Not sure how we solve this without directly plumbing the cash to independent studios through a tax on tech funding a subsidy on independent studios.
In the 1940s it was common for studios to own movie theaters, but the Supreme Court ruled that this violated antitrust laws and forced them to sell off their theaters.
To me it's the same situation again, but now the theaters (streaming platforms) owning the studios.
Sadly the era of government that split up studios and theaters is long gone. Hollywood is built on a different time between things like this and its flavor of unions that cover the biggest players in the industry.
Closest thing we have to a Hollywood today is games, but game makers can also make consoles and industry wide unions would never happen. Is there some unionization in games? Yeah, but I haven't heard of any single one that cover a significant number of different studios
There is no church-and-state issue because the state is not stopping anyone from distributing video to whoever wants it.
It’s trivial to make and distribute a video (or text website or audio recording). Just because one business does not want to pay for it does not entitle the public to it, like any other media.
Yeah the church and state comparison is funny. The principles guiding separation of church and state are why the government can’t stop or punish tech companies from having studios.
What he’s suggesting is to violate the first amendment. You cant just tell tech companies they cant have studios.
Yet we could tell the studio companies that they can't have theatres. How did that not violate it? Has the amendment changed in the past century? Were the judges just stupid?
Regardless of the legal mechanisms, there is clearly a difference in power dynamics when people could only share media via specific venues compares to now when people have basically zero barrier to sharing any and all media.
This feels like a strange take to me. With the internet, it has never been easier for people anywhere in the (connected) world to find an audience, which we've seen to great and detrimental effects. Prior to this, reaching widespread audiences _required_ powerful entities (publishers, marketers, broadcasters).
I don't disagree I just don't think it has moved the needle that much. Powerful publishers still direct an enormous amount of the content available online
And there are fewer of them, because they have been consolidating for decades now
Edit: I think that a lot of people overestimate how much online publishing is independent. A vast majority of it is still backed/funded/owned by legacy media and publishers.
I see this all the time with video games. People will say "look at how popular "New Release" is! Indie games are so successful nowadays!" But it turns out that the game they're talking about is backed by a huge publisher
There are 8 billion people in the world, and only 24 hours in a day. There is no reason to expect anyone to hear or see what you are saying, it’s logistically impossible. Even for professionals, hollywood, big news channels, all are becoming less and less relevant.
Amazon can't bury it without alienating Luca Guadagnino. Instead they are allowing anyone else publish it. Maybe A24 will want it, it is screening well.
Either get used to more and more stuff like that, or regulate the sh* out of it. Without stopping stuff like that early on, the concentration of wealth and power only increases.
"We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home."
They are claiming they will not. Many people would have to have the power to hold it up indefinitely, films get delayed by many different factors. It remains to be seen which happens.
It reads like this is meant to be a Social Network style portrayal where Altman is not necessarily portrayed flatteringly or with his approval, no? Where Melania was a payoff to a world leader, dropping this as they're making business deals also seems to be in service of their relationship.
I think so too, I just thought the social network was a really good movie and I'd rather the OpenAi movie has an ending, you know. Or to be fair you could just get Sorkin to write it and I would lap it up anyway.
Honestly not that big of a loss. Even if it’s Sam Altman being an ass the entire movie, it still wouldn’t be a good film because it’s about a wet blanket.
He’s not Steve Jobs or something. It’d be about as interesting as a Jeff Bezos film. Nobody cares.
I wasn’t saying it needs to be positive, I’m saying he’s a super boring movie character.
A whole movie about him being fired from OpenAI just doesn’t sound compelling. A simple documentary would be a much better format, and likely more accurate and interesting.
Zuckerberg's not a very interesting character but in the hands of a David Fincher, that wasn't a problem. Maybe the same is true for Altman and this director?
Amazon is actually much more reasonable than the headline makes it seem:
Well, yeah, I kind of agree. Amazon probably shouldn't be the one producing the film, and it sounds like they're working to get the rights sold to someone else.The headline also sucks because "after" means "months after with no evidence that it's related". It's just clickbait all around.
Amazon dropped the movie after announcing a partnership with OpenAI. The headline clearly communicates the only demonstrable action Amazon has taken.
Whether they're actually going to sell it is TBD. Until they do, they've taken no concrete action except cancel it. I don't think this article is clickbait.
Watching what is done versus what is said is an increasingly important executive level function when words can be generated for just a few tokens.
What makes you think they've canceled it? Did you read past the headline?
What should they have done here — keep the movie despite the obvious conflict of interest? Be more secretive about the fact they're trying to separate so no one can write articles like these?
If they did the right thing, it would look exactly like this. And I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie.
> I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie
I take the opposing viewpoint. They don’t have to “refuse” to give away the movie rights, they can just… not do it. Pitchforks in three months or is that still reasonable? Six months? Two years?
I don’t believe a word they say until I see action that backs it up.
Look at their distribution of the Melania movie. It was very obviously a money losing favour to Trump. But they’d never admit as such because why would they? And what do I gain by taking them at their word that it’s a wonderful piece of film deserving of the money spent on it when that’s obviously untrue?
You should probably also take the opposing views of corporate media, especially a tabloid rag like the independent, and assume their intent is to foment the maximum amount of outrage possible in order to drive ad impressions.
Agree on tabloids in general but this is widely reported https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/luca-guadagnino...
What on earth are you on about? The article is referring to Variety, which refers to Puck as having broken the story. Are Variety, the renowned trade publication, and Puck, an independent and journalist-owned publication also "tabloid rags"?
https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-alt...
https://puck.news/amazon-is-dumping-its-sam-altman-movie/
…yes? Here I am reacting to a direct quote from the studio, not the article itself.
Why do you agree that Amazon shouldn't be the one producing the film if you don't believe there's any evidence them dropping it is related to the partnership?
1. Because Amazon is a bigtech corp making a film about another bigtech corp. Plenty of conflicts of interest here (in either direction).
2. Regardless of whether it is or isn't related, implying they are without any evidence is just speculation. There's a reason they didn't say "months after" in the headline, even though it would be much more informative and much less confusing!
You also seem to conflate "there's evidence for" and "you believe that". Those are very distinct statements. "you don't believe there's evidence for X" doesn't make sense here — I said "there is no evidence for X in the article", that's a fact, not a belief.
He's agreeing with like, the universe, man.
>The headline also sucks because "after" means "months after with no evidence that it's related". It's just clickbait all around.
post hoc ergo propter hoc is how print media imply a unstated fact without falling foul of Betteridge's law of headlines.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You are correct, and it is so rampant these days that I wish we just banned the word "after" in headlines.
I am quite certain that I am being downvoted because there are people who no longer care about the quality of arguments and think that a poor argument in support of their cause is a good thing.
The bulk of downvotes I have received fall into two categories. One is from people who disagree with me, and the other is from people who believe that my critique of a bad argument means that I believe the opposite to the conclusion of the argument.
The latter is the one that bugs me more. Because I feel that a bad argument in support of a conclusion that I believe is damaging to the understanding of the conclusion because it represents a refuge that anyone arguing the opposite can cling to in order to undermine good arguments. They can legitimately ask "Why should I believe your good argument, if you express a similar degree of support for an obviously flawed argument" It signals that the position is held because of allegiance, not because it is correct.
Even scarier is that it raises the spectre of people passionately advocating for a position when they themselves do not respect the opinion, but simply acknowledge that this is the position of their allegiance.
There is experimental evidence for this on both sides of American politics with people being tested flipping their opinions on identical policies just by presenting them as being the favoured opinion of a different side.
Headlines are there to trigger people. It’s a shame that hacker news folk fall for them too often.
There is clearly a church-and-state issue with tech platforms owning studios. On the other hand, they have the cash. Not sure how we solve this without directly plumbing the cash to independent studios through a tax on tech funding a subsidy on independent studios.
In the 1940s it was common for studios to own movie theaters, but the Supreme Court ruled that this violated antitrust laws and forced them to sell off their theaters.
To me it's the same situation again, but now the theaters (streaming platforms) owning the studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
Sadly the era of government that split up studios and theaters is long gone. Hollywood is built on a different time between things like this and its flavor of unions that cover the biggest players in the industry.
Closest thing we have to a Hollywood today is games, but game makers can also make consoles and industry wide unions would never happen. Is there some unionization in games? Yeah, but I haven't heard of any single one that cover a significant number of different studios
And a federal government openly encouraging it
>a tax on tech funding a subsidy on independent studios
Forcing consumers to subsidize an expensive taste sounds like a peculiar idea.
More like ensuring culture and art isn’t captured by the big conglomerate.
How is it different than media companies owning studios? Or simply studios existing? Studios publish viewpoints.
What you’re saying seems to completely ignore the first amendment.
The first amendment is for humans fuck the corps
But in practice no, the government cannot compel speech like this due to the first amendment
This is the same studio that did the Melania movie.
There is no church-and-state issue because the state is not stopping anyone from distributing video to whoever wants it.
It’s trivial to make and distribute a video (or text website or audio recording). Just because one business does not want to pay for it does not entitle the public to it, like any other media.
Yeah the church and state comparison is funny. The principles guiding separation of church and state are why the government can’t stop or punish tech companies from having studios.
What he’s suggesting is to violate the first amendment. You cant just tell tech companies they cant have studios.
Yet we could tell the studio companies that they can't have theatres. How did that not violate it? Has the amendment changed in the past century? Were the judges just stupid?
Maybe it's not so simple?
Regardless of the legal mechanisms, there is clearly a difference in power dynamics when people could only share media via specific venues compares to now when people have basically zero barrier to sharing any and all media.
> It’s trivial to make and distribute a video
It's trivial to shout into the void
It's nontrivial to get heard
Freedom of speech is not sufficient in a world where it is so easy for the powerful to drown out all but the biggest voices
This feels like a strange take to me. With the internet, it has never been easier for people anywhere in the (connected) world to find an audience, which we've seen to great and detrimental effects. Prior to this, reaching widespread audiences _required_ powerful entities (publishers, marketers, broadcasters).
Why do you feel differently?
At least in the US, it seems like this viewpoint held more water before net neutrality died.
> Prior to this, reaching widespread audiences _required_ powerful entities (publishers, marketers, broadcasters).
I don't disagree I just don't think it has moved the needle that much. Powerful publishers still direct an enormous amount of the content available online
And there are fewer of them, because they have been consolidating for decades now
Edit: I think that a lot of people overestimate how much online publishing is independent. A vast majority of it is still backed/funded/owned by legacy media and publishers.
I see this all the time with video games. People will say "look at how popular "New Release" is! Indie games are so successful nowadays!" But it turns out that the game they're talking about is backed by a huge publisher
There are 8 billion people in the world, and only 24 hours in a day. There is no reason to expect anyone to hear or see what you are saying, it’s logistically impossible. Even for professionals, hollywood, big news channels, all are becoming less and less relevant.
They already paid for it though. The movie was done.
So the government should force them to publish the viewpoint against their will?
I want a movie about Jassy ratting out Amodei to the feds
"I was told to say X" roll credits
Right after taking part of restricting Fable etc?
They don‘t even hide it anymore.
Amazon can't bury it without alienating Luca Guadagnino. Instead they are allowing anyone else publish it. Maybe A24 will want it, it is screening well.
Stuff like that happens in every oligarchy.
Either get used to more and more stuff like that, or regulate the sh* out of it. Without stopping stuff like that early on, the concentration of wealth and power only increases.
Oh so there will be a sequel!
Does Amazon likely have the power to hold this up indefinitely or will it easily be moved to another studio?
"We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home."
They are claiming they will not. Many people would have to have the power to hold it up indefinitely, films get delayed by many different factors. It remains to be seen which happens.
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It reads like this is meant to be a Social Network style portrayal where Altman is not necessarily portrayed flatteringly or with his approval, no? Where Melania was a payoff to a world leader, dropping this as they're making business deals also seems to be in service of their relationship.
It's too early to do a Social Network for OpenAI
We have the info already. Whole books about it. It is innevitable.
I think so too, I just thought the social network was a really good movie and I'd rather the OpenAi movie has an ending, you know. Or to be fair you could just get Sorkin to write it and I would lap it up anyway.
Because he is one?
I wonder how long before we get a Bezos biopic.
We already had a movie where Kevin Spacey played Lex Luthor
Honestly not that big of a loss. Even if it’s Sam Altman being an ass the entire movie, it still wouldn’t be a good film because it’s about a wet blanket.
He’s not Steve Jobs or something. It’d be about as interesting as a Jeff Bezos film. Nobody cares.
is more about the drama of him being fired of openai it doesn't have to be positive to be interesting
I wasn’t saying it needs to be positive, I’m saying he’s a super boring movie character.
A whole movie about him being fired from OpenAI just doesn’t sound compelling. A simple documentary would be a much better format, and likely more accurate and interesting.
Zuckerberg's not a very interesting character but in the hands of a David Fincher, that wasn't a problem. Maybe the same is true for Altman and this director?
The Facebook founding was interesting, not sure about Z on his own.
OpenAI played Dota 2 for a couple of years