Amazon Shelves Sam Altman Biopic, Exposing Limits on Dramatizing Living Tech Figures

Amazon MGM has declined to release *Artificial*, Luca Guadagnino's film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the November 2023 board crisis that fired and reinstated him in five days. The studio has not disclosed its reasoning. The shelving underscores a deeper tension: how the AI industry's most consequential actors and events get narrated, and whether legal exposure, pressure from subjects, or reputational concerns constrain what reaches audiences. Studios have shelved projects before, but rarely one this well-resourced about such recent, unresolved corporate drama involving a sitting executive.