Andrew Garfield 'fascinated' by behind-the-scenes drama around Artificial

Andrew Garfield is "fascinated" by the controversy surrounding his movie Artificial.

The 42-year-old actor stars as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino's film and while the fate of the project was up in the air just a few weeks ago after Amazon MGM Studios suddenly announced they were dropping the project, months after entering into a $50 billion investment with OpenAI, it has now found a new distributor in Neon.

Andrew has now played down the behind-the-scenes drama and insisted he is "very, very excited" that Artificial has a new home.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "This business is in an interesting place and I’m fascinated by how things work. I’m really grateful to Amazon for making the film with us and I’m also really grateful to Amazon for helping it find a new home.

"And I think Neon’s a really, really exciting home for it. I think it’s a really good fit and I’m really excited to release it with them,” calling Neon, “a daring studio doing daring films so I’m very, very excited to be partnering with them on it.”

It was previously reported the likes of Netflix, Focus and Warner Bros. passed on taking on Artificial, with sources telling the Hollywood Reporter there were a variety of reasons why, including political concerns.

Amazon MGM previously insisted Artificial would be "better served if it were released by a different studio".

They said in a statement: "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."

Artificial would've marked the third collaboration between Guadagnino and Amazon MGM Studios after they worked on 2024’s Challengers and thriller After the Hunt, which also stars The Magic Faraway Tree actor Andrew.

When the project was announced in June 2025, David Heyman said: "We’ve always wanted to work with Luca. His talent, his sensibility - he is a singular filmmaker, and I’m excited to be collaborating with him on this."

Described as a "comedic drama set in the world of artificial intelligence", Artificial will reportedly be set in 2023 when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was fired and subsequently rehired at the company in a matter of days.

Cooper Koch, Chris O'Dowd, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz and Billie Lourd have also been cast in the ensemble film.

Yura takes on the role of Ilya Sutskever - a co-founder who led the movement to remove Altman from OpenAI - and A Complete Unknown actress Monica is playing chief technology officer Mira Murati.

Saturday Night Live's Simon Rich has penned the screenplay.

A new release date has yet to be announced.