Amazon MGM Drops Luca Guadagnino's 'Artificial' & Is It Tom Cruise's Oscar Time? | Reel Reflections #6
You know what they say - better late than never. Yes, this week’s newsletter is a little late, but it’s been a busy week getting ready for a family vacation, so what can I say. In the meantime, we’ve gotten some big news in the industry, so let’s discuss.
Earlies this week, Amazon MGM announced that it is dropping Luca Guadagnino’s newest film ‘Artificial’ from its release slate and is now shopping the film around to other distributors. The film, which had a $40 million budget and, according to the reports, is practically finished and stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, the infamous CEO of OpenAI, probably the leading AI firm in the world. This in and of itself is not a terribly uncommon practice in the film industry. Just a few years ago the comedy Joy Ride was initially produced by Lionsgate before it dropped the film, and Universal Pictures picked it up. In 2023, MUBI picked up Coralie Fargaet’s The Substance after Universal Pictures dropped it. That film went on to be nominated for Best Picture and saw the return of Demi Moore to the spotlight. In 2008, Slumdog Millionaire was dropped during production when Warner Bros. shut down their independent film development studio. That movie was subsequently picked up by Fox Searchlight and went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
All this to say these things do happen. So why is this instance so noteworthy? Well, for starters, this is a film in which the subject matter is highly controversial and hyper-relevant to today’s world. Artificial Intelligence has become like a python, ensnaring itself around everything we do in society and slowly squeezing the life out of all of us. Every single day I come upon a new app, program, system or what have you that’s now “Powered By AI" in some way, shape or form. Why is Zillow now using AI to show me homes for sale? Just show me the homes! It’s easy. Data centers have become topics of conversation for their environmental impact and impact on communities. Just recently, communities in Utah were up in arms about a new 40,000 square foot data center build proposal by Shark Tank’s own Kevin O’Leary. When local lawmakers approved the project, disregarding public opposition and concerns, the public subsequently voted multiple folks out of office, including the President of the State’s senate who’d held his seat for 16 years to this point. It’s a hot button issue that permeates every facet of society today.
But not only does this film come at what feels like such a turning point for the public, but for Amazon MGM, this news comes just months after a massive partnership was announced between Amazon and OpenAI which included the former investing $50 billion into the AI firm. After multiple positive test screenings reports say the film does not show Altman or Elon Musk in a positive light, the film was unceremoniously dropped nearly at completion. This sort of move further shows the squeeze AI firms have on us.
But it doesn’t stop there. Since the film was dropped, it’s since been screened for other distributors in the hopes of being picked up. Let’s run down what’s happened with that briefly.
Netflix: recently acquired Ben Affleck’s AI company Interpositive which develops AI filmmaking tools - PASS
Focus Features: Owned by Comcast, who’s been investing heavily in AI in their systems and through their Comcast Ventures brand - PASS
A24: Days after the film was dropped, they announced a $75 million investment from Google into developing AI filmmaking tools - PASS
The list can continue on to major distributors like Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, etc. who have not been reported on passing but are also not in the running. These major studios all heavily invested in AI. Interestingly, the only distribution companies still circling are Neon, which has a history of good acquisitions and just recently had Best Picture winner Anora on their slate, and MUBI, which is no stranger to acquiring controversial films (it released the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice in 2024), but also was one of the first distributors to take major investment from AI firms, with a $100 million injection from Sequoia Capital in May 2025.
Needless to say, this whole situation stinks and it’s a shame because Guadagnino’s films I generally enjoy and this feels like a film that deserves to be out there.
Could Tom Cruise finally get his Oscar? This week, we got more insight into Cruise’s newest film Digger from Alejandro González Iñárritu. At least, we got a sense of how Cruise and the film will be campaigning. Roughly 6 months ago, Warner Bros. released a sizzle reel/title reveal that features Cruise predominantly. Now, the studio has released what they call the Tom Cruise Retrospective trailer, which starts with nearly 3 minutes of highlights from his career before shifting into a few brief moments from the new film.
While I may have some slight reservations for the film, it’s clear that the studio is going all in on Cruise and I have to admit this looks like his most interesting and unique project in years. That makes me excited. I really enjoy Cruise on screen and have been hoping for him to return to his 90’s/early 2000’s form of doing seriously interesting films instead of the same action films over and over.
If this works and we’re talking about Cruise’s Oscar win 10 months from now, it’ll be ripped out of the same playbook for Paul Newman, who won an honorary Academy Award and then the very next year won his first Oscar for his performance in The Color of Money (which he starred in with Cruise). Last year, Cruise won an honorary Oscar from the Academy. Now is as good a time as any to win his first competitive one.
Physical Media Highlight
This week’s physical Media Highlight is a little different than what we’ve been doing. I’m not going to show off one particular piece but instead, I want to show off my new shelf that I got that’s allowed me to organize some of my collection in a way that’s been on my mind forever. So, let’s go through how this is organized. At the very very top we have a couple cool box sets in my collection, including the Singin’ In The Rain set I showed off last week. On Shelf 1, we have a small selection of boutique blu-rays followed by all my standard 4k’s. Shelf 2 is all my Criterion Collection films organized by box sets, then blu-ray’s/4k’s and then DVD’s. Below that is a shelf of my completed filmographies. I have Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and (almost) Paul Thomas Anderson. I’m just missing Anderson’s debut film Hard Eight, which is a tough release to find in the wild and have been holding off just ordering the Imprint blu-ray import from Australia. Below that shelf is all my horror films in alphabetical order. Below that are my steelbooks organized by format as well as all my international/foreign language films. Then we’ve got the kids movie/animated movie shelf and finally my collection of snapcase DVD’s. This was a cool shelf to put together, and I like having my collection organized and displayed like this.
The Film Box Podcast
This week on The Film Box Podcast, we were joined by our good friend Marcel Urena, aka Marcel’s Movies and More on TikTok to finish our Spielberg Alien Movie Month by looking at 2005’s War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. This was an excellent conversation and was so much fun to dive in to all the facets of this film. It also is our longest film to date, at just over 2 hours. How exciting! Give it a listen below on Spotify or find it on your preferred podcast platform here.
That’s it for this week! We’ll see you next week for more Reel Reflections! See you at the movies!