'Artificial' Hits 96% on Rotten Tomatoes After Amazon MGM Dumped It

Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial" stands at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest score of the director's career across 11 feature films. The rating arrives barely four months after Amazon MGM removed the movie from its summer slate and anonymous sources dismissed it as fit only for streaming.

The film had its UK premiere at the London Film Festival on Sunday. Guadagnino stood beside cast members Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov at Royal Festival Hall and received thunderous applause. The world premiere had taken place a week earlier at the New York Film Festival, where, per Variety, the audience embraced the film with rapture.

"So this is a dawn-of-a-new-world story, as well as a backstabbing corporate business story, and also a horror movie, in which AI emerges from the lab as a sinister serpent," Variety chief critic Owen Gleiberman wrote, calling the movie a "brilliant but playful docudrama, meticulously true to history." The genre-blending project dramatizes the rise of artificial intelligence and one of its fathers, Sam Altman.

What does the reversal change for the studios?

Andrew Garfield has moved to the front of the best supporting actor race. Another review credited his performance as "a masterclass in diabolical villainy." The critical consensus, per Variety, holds that "Artificial" — not Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Network" follow-up "The Social Reckoning," which Sony Pictures released last weekend — is the worthy heir to David Fincher's 2010 film.

One film executive at a rival studio questioned the narrative that surrounded the film after Amazon walked away. "Wasn't this supposed to be god-awful?" the executive said. "A reaction this strong just shows you, every studio pretending the film wasn't releasable is just conflicted out by their own investments in AI."

Amazon released the film in June with a statement: "We believe that 'Artificial' will be better served if it were released by a different studio." Global press noted the timing. The decision came three months after Amazon signed a significant partnership with Altman's OpenAI, including a $50 billion investment in the company. Neon rescued the movie with a global rights deal shortly after the split.

How deep does the AI tension run?

Amazon's troubles at the intersection of talent and AI extend beyond Guadagnino's film. At New York Comic Con last weekend, Nicolas Cage said he refused to sign a document permitting the studio to use AI around his likeness on the canceled series "Spider-Noir."

"I am not an AI-friendly actor. I'm not a member of their club. I didn't sign the waiver," Cage said. "I'm probably not going to be working with that studio again."

Insiders close to "Spider-Noir" added context. The form came from producer Sony Pictures Television and was considered "industry standard." It permits duplication of an actor in costume for VFX work in postproduction. Actors may opt out, and the form is said to comply with SAG-AFTRA guidelines.

One creative team member on an Amazon MGM series told Variety that AI training has become a fixture on the lot. The source described a "mandatory and perfunctory meeting" with the company's AI team, framed like workplace education on sexual harassment or fire safety. The AI group spent an hour pitching products it called "tools." The source said the tools could "eliminate entire jobs." Corporate stewards from Amazon sat through the training "stone-faced," and the source found it "collectively embarrassing for everyone to be doing this, including on the Amazon side." A source with direct knowledge of Amazon's process said such meetings are not mandatory and that humans guide every part of the tools' use. Amazon MGM declined to comment.

What remains unresolved is whether a prompt can produce work as well positioned as "Artificial" — a film the studios abandoned, and the critics claimed.