Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Movie, Data Center Workers Fight Back, and Meta Leaks Employee Data
Leah Feiger: And later in the show, we'll get an update on how the talks between Anthropic and the government seem to be improving now
Leah Feiger: And later in the show, we'll get an update on how the talks between Anthropic and the government seem to be improving now that CEO Dario Amodei isn't in the room. Zoë Schiffer: OK guys, I am so excited to talk about the business with this movie Artificial, which was suddenly dropped by Amazon's MGM Studios. So to get everyone up to speed, Artificial is a film by the director of Call Me by Your Name and Challengers, two great movies if I do say so. And it's a biographical drama about OpenAI and specifically The Blip, which was this moment in November 2023 when Sam Altman was abruptly fired by his board of directors and then swiftly rehired after basically the whole company revolted. I genuinely cannot believe they made an entire movie about this. Brian Barrett: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: It's been described as The Social Network, but for the AI Age. The movie features a star-studded cast with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Monica Barbaro as the former OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati.
The movie was like mid-budget. I think they spent $40 million on production, but it was basically almost done when Amazon announced that they were dropping the film saying, "It would be better served if it were released by another studio." The decision has been drawing criticism because it's seen as Amazon basically doing a solid for Sam Altman, who the movie portrays pretty badly. I have to know what you guys think. Leah Feiger: I have so many thoughts immediately. One, Andrew Garfield, we knew that. We knew it was always going to be him. Playing whiny tech bros is absolutely in his wheelhouse. Zoë Schiffer: He famously played the Facebook cofounder who was kind of pushed out by Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Brian Barrett: I think too, there's some context here too, which is that Amazon has $50 billion invested in OpenAI, right? So in terms of like, when they say the movie will be better served by another studio, I think what they really mean is the studio will be better served by another movie, right?
This is really like Leah Feiger: For sure. Brian Barrett: —arm's length at this. What really strikes me about it is something that we've known is coming and has been happening, but the extent to which the film industry and the tech industry are intertwined right now. Amazon owns MGM. Paramount is being acquired by the Ellison family, Larry Ellison, obviously the founder of Oracle. So all these tech billionaires are now sort of totally intertwined with the movie industry, which is really going to determine what movies get made and what don't. And this is like a really glaring example of that. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, I can speak firsthand that there were many Twitter/Elon Musk film project that were in talks, but very difficult to get that to the screen for obvious reasons. I do think the film was, everything we heard was that it was going to be unflattering for Sam Altman. In fact, The Blip is pretty unflattering for Sam Altman because the reason that a lot of Sam Altman's executives turned on him and orchestrated what has been called a coup was that they perceived him to be duplicitous, to lie, to tell different people different things based on what he thought they wanted them to hear.
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