Elon Musk is “living the dream and… living the meme,” but he may not be too fond of whatever jokes arise from his portrayal in Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming OpenAI movie. (Yes, if you missed it, that’s a real thing.) The owner of X’s very own MechaHitler will appear in the film, titled Artificial, “in a few scenes of villainy and comic relief,” according to a report from Puck News‘ Matt Belloni. (The very same Matt Belloni that almost blew up Matt Remick’s (fictional) career in The Studio.)
Belloni got his hands on a draft of the Simon Rich-penned script, which, per earlier reports, “revolves around the period at the artificial intelligence company OpenAI in 2023 that saw CEO Sam Altman fired and rehired in a matter of days.” (Altman will reportedly be played by Andrew Garfield.) That’s certainly a part of it, in Belloni’s estimation, but not the full story. The film also hinges on OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever (Anora‘s Yura Borisov), a character Belloni describes as an “idealistic and naive Israeli machine learning engineer.” Similar to Eduardo Saverin—coincidentally also played by Garfield—in The Social Network, Sutskever will be “leveraged, marginalized, and ultimately betrayed by both his power-hungry friend Altman and the larger Silicon Valley community—with potentially disastrous consequences for all of humanity.”
Musk’s part is reportedly “minor” in comparison, but will surely generate a whole wave of discourse when the film is released in 2026 (according to Amazon MGM’s current slate). In real life, Musk—a former OpenAI investor—is currently locked in a back-and-forth legal battle over the direction of the company. Musk’s character in the film, however, will reportedly be “more concerned with his (malfunctioning) driverless Tesla than the prospect of uncontrolled A.I. destroying the world.” At one point, Mira Murati (Monica Barbaro), the company’s former chief technology officer, says, “Elon’s not so bad, as far as dictators go.”
This is still a draft, of course, and Belloni notes that Guadagnino will surely “put his auteur stamp on the material” before final cut. Regardless, the overall tone is apparently “pretty much in line with what you might expect Hollywood to do with the OpenAI origin story: a straightforward indictment of the reckless culture behind the commercialization of artificial intelligence, as well as a drive-by hit on Altman, who is depicted as a liar and a master schemer.”
It’s an interesting prospect for Amazon, which is reportedly mulling adding another $8 billion to its already sizable investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic. The hit on Altman must look good on paper, but one has to wonder what Amazon’s top execs will think when (and if) they process that they’re also complicit in what Rich, per a note at the top of the script, believes “is the most accurate portrayal of what has happened to our world and why.”
