Hollywood bows its knees to OpenAI

Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.’ The watch has it all It is said I decided to pass on the pick up industrial — director Luca Guadagnino’s new biographical drama about OpenAI co-founder/CEO Sam Altman — for distribution deals. And while Neon and mobi They are still said to be interested in the film, and this situation makes it seem as if Hollywood no longer has the courage to tell critical stories about big tech companies.

Post production is on industrial It was almost over when Amazon MGM was unexpectedly announced last week They no longer plan to distribute the film. The news comes as a surprise given how long the film is and reports of it I went to Amazon first To give it an Oscar-eligible theatrical short later this year. industrial It was also reportedly scheduled for a wider release in early 2027 and a showing at the SXSW Film & TV Festival, but those plans are now dead in the water.

Although Amazon did not go into detail about the reason for its downfall industrialThe company said Delivery time that she felt the film “would be better if released by a different studio”. While Neon or Mubi could ultimately be better homes for the project, Amazon’s decision follows suit $50 billion investment in OpenAI From earlier this year. Amazon He made it very clear It wants to be in the AI ​​space in a big way, and it’s easy to understand why the company would be hesitant to release a film that portrays an AI executive in a negative light. But the bigger problem is the fact that Amazon probably won’t be the last studio to move this way.

On paper at least, the whole saga sounds like a drama that could serve as an interesting and timely examination of one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs. After projects like Daring, Mountainhead, Leakage, And the next one is by Aaron Sorkin Social account, industrial It seems like the kind of movie that’s in keeping with Hollywood’s recent focus on stories about tech giants. And in this age of generative AI being shoved down everyone’s throat, audiences are primed for a star-studded feature focusing on some of the people responsible for the technology’s omnipresence.

All of this paints a very bleak picture of Hollywood’s potential future, one in which films and series are produced using artificial general intelligence by studios that refuse to say anything truly insightful or negative about the technology or its creators. Projects like Artificial Intelligence Doc: Or How I Became an Apocalypse It’s already shown us how uninspired and soulless movies about AI can be when they’re made by people who seem beholden to tech executives. What we are looking at now is a potential era of Hollywood giants doing everything they can to stay in Silicon Valley. Working this way—from a place of cowardice in the service of technology-driven profits—is antithetical to producing good art.