Broadcaster and author Richard Osman has criticised Amazon after the tech giant pulled the production of the almost-finished Luca Guadagnino film Artificial, which stars Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Speaking on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment with co-host Marina Hyde, Osman said American popular culture is under the control of “five billionaires who all have quite thin skins”.
Amazon Drops Luca Guadagnino Film
Earlier this week, Amazon MGM announced it was no longer partnering with film director Luca Guadagnino on Artificial, stating that the project “will be better served if it were released by a different studio.” Netflix, Focus, and A24 have passed on acquiring the movie, but a source told The Hollywood Reporter that Mubi is considering the project.
Osman said: “We are 100% definitely in an era where American popular culture is under the yoke of about five people, all of whom are billionaires and all of whom have quite thin skins.” He added that after the election of Donald Trump in 2024, many big companies called those involved in such projects to reassure them, but he has not seen any of those projects come out. “They are not even green lit. These are not sort of small spec script writers. These are people with big overall deals who are tackling the big subjects, the big people of the age. People are saying to them, ‘Have you got anything that isn't about Elon Musk? Have you got something different?’”
Self-Censorship in Hollywood
Marina Hyde described the situation as a “period of self-censorship”, noting that the decision to pull the film comes just months after Amazon announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a multi-year strategic partnership. She said: “It's just a different calculus when people are talking about, ‘We can’t make this project because of our cloud partnerships.’ This is something we haven't been thinking about before but you can see it across all sorts of things.”
A spokesperson for Amazon said: “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. 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.”
