Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership
the-independent.com
the-independent.com
> “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,” a spokesperson for Amazon said to Variety in a statement. “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.”
The headline also sucks because "after" means "months after with no evidence that it's related". It's just clickbait all around.
Whether they're actually going to sell it is TBD. Until they do, they've taken no concrete action except cancel it. I don't think this article is clickbait.
What should they have done here — keep the movie despite the obvious conflict of interest? Be more secretive about the fact they're trying to separate so no one can write articles like these?
If they did the right thing, it would look exactly like this. And I think it's generally a good idea to assume good faith (even with corporations) — you can still get your pitchforks up if they do refuse to give away the rights to movie.
I take the opposing viewpoint. They don’t have to “refuse” to give away the movie rights, they can just… not do it. Pitchforks in three months or is that still reasonable? Six months? Two years?
I don’t believe a word they say until I see action that backs it up.
Look at their distribution of the Melania movie. It was very obviously a money losing favour to Trump. But they’d never admit as such because why would they? And what do I gain by taking them at their word that it’s a wonderful piece of film deserving of the money spent on it when that’s obviously untrue?
https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-alt...
See Trump
post hoc ergo propter hoc is how print media imply a unstated fact without falling foul of Betteridge's law of headlines.
The bulk of downvotes I have received fall into two categories. One is from people who disagree with me, and the other is from people who believe that my critique of a bad argument means that I believe the opposite to the conclusion of the argument.
The latter is the one that bugs me more. Because I feel that a bad argument in support of a conclusion that I believe is damaging to the understanding of the conclusion because it represents a refuge that anyone arguing the opposite can cling to in order to undermine good arguments. They can legitimately ask "Why should I believe your good argument, if you express a similar degree of support for an obviously flawed argument" It signals that the position is held because of allegiance, not because it is correct.
Even scarier is that it raises the spectre of people passionately advocating for a position when they themselves do not respect the opinion, but simply acknowledge that this is the position of their allegiance.
There is experimental evidence for this on both sides of American politics with people being tested flipping their opinions on identical policies just by presenting them as being the favoured opinion of a different side.
2. Regardless of whether it is or isn't related, implying they are without any evidence is just speculation. There's a reason they didn't say "months after" in the headline, even though it would be much more informative and much less confusing!
You also seem to conflate "there's evidence for" and "you believe that". Those are very distinct statements. "you don't believe there's evidence for X" doesn't make sense here — I said "there is no evidence for X in the article", that's a fact, not a belief.
And you fell for it.
To me it's the same situation again, but now the theaters (streaming platforms) owning the studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
Closest thing we have to a Hollywood today is games, but game makers can also make consoles and industry wide unions would never happen. Is there some unionization in games? Yeah, but I haven't heard of any single one that cover a significant number of different studios
It’s trivial to make and distribute a video (or text website or audio recording). Just because one business does not want to pay for it does not entitle the public to it, like any other media.
It's trivial to shout into the void
It's nontrivial to get heard
Freedom of speech is not sufficient in a world where it is so easy for the powerful to drown out all but the biggest voices
Why do you feel differently?
I don't disagree I just don't think it has moved the needle that much. Powerful publishers still direct an enormous amount of the content available online
And there are fewer of them, because they have been consolidating for decades now
Edit: I think that a lot of people overestimate how much online publishing is independent. A vast majority of it is still backed/funded/owned by legacy media and publishers.
I see this all the time with video games. People will say "look at how popular "New Release" is! Indie games are so successful nowadays!" But it turns out that the game they're talking about is backed by a huge publisher
What he’s suggesting is to violate the first amendment. You cant just tell tech companies they cant have studios.
Maybe it's not so simple?
Forcing consumers to subsidize an expensive taste sounds like a peculiar idea.
What you’re saying seems to completely ignore the first amendment.
They are claiming they will not. Many people would have to have the power to hold it up indefinitely, films get delayed by many different factors. It remains to be seen which happens.
Either get used to more and more stuff like that, or regulate the sh* out of it. Without stopping stuff like that early on, the concentration of wealth and power only increases.
He’s not Steve Jobs or something. It’d be about as interesting as a Jeff Bezos film. Nobody cares.
A whole movie about him being fired from OpenAI just doesn’t sound compelling. A simple documentary would be a much better format, and likely more accurate and interesting.