Sam Altman Biopic Drama & Hollywood’s Box Office Bounce!

**Matt Belloni** (0:02)
It makes you feel bad about the future of humankind after you've seen it. And maybe that's enough to get it into the awards conversation.

**Peter Hamby** (0:14)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.
It's Friday, July 3rd. Today, Matt Belloni joins me to talk Hollywood. After Amazon announced its casting aside, a critical Luca Guadagnino film about Sam Altman and OpenAI, Matt has the scoop on where that movie is landing. We also discuss surprisingly strong box office numbers in 2026 and why Hollywood is on pace to have its most profitable year since before the pandemic. Matt explains why and which movies are driving the box office surge. Hint, it's not Supergirl.
We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

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**Peter Hamby** (1:42)
Happy Friday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague, Matt Belloni. We're going to talk about his scoop that artificial, that Sam Altman movie that Amazon kicked overboard has landed somewhere. Matt's going to tell us where. We're also going to talk about some surprisingly strong box office numbers this year, including the summer box office and why Hollywood could be on the pace for its biggest year since before the pandemic. If you're watching on YouTube, yes, I did get a haircut. Matt, it's good to see you, buddy. What are your Fourth of July plans?

**Matt Belloni** (2:15)
I will now getting a haircut. I have jealousy.
No, I'm back in LA. I go to a South Carolina idyllic, quiet retreat for two weeks at the beginning of every summer. Now I'm back. Going to be in LA for the rest of the summer and going to the World Cup game.

**Peter Hamby** (2:32)
That's awesome. I went to the USA Turkey game and, man, it was electric.

**Matt Belloni** (2:37)
Yeah, I do not get a USA game. I get Spain versus Austria, which should be fun too.

**Peter Hamby** (2:44)
That would be great. That would be awesome. Anyway, let's get into it. So on Media Monday, John Kelly and I discussed your reporting about this a few days ago.
Artificial, made by Luca Guadagnino, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman. You got to look at the script. You didn't reveal a ton. I was reading your piece about it, but it seemed kind of dark. Amazon, which just did a deal with OpenAI, announced that they're letting somebody else take this film off of their hands. How generous of them. Where's it going?

**Matt Belloni** (3:15)
Well, that was the funniest part. They feel it would be best served by being distributed by another company. It had nothing to do with the $50 billion deal that Amazon signed with OpenAI between the time that the movie was greenlit and now the time that it's gonna be released.
There was a lot of speculation around town about where this was gonna land. I broke the news yesterday that Neon, the small independent distributor, most probably best known for releasing Enora, which won Best Picture a couple of years ago, they are taking on this movie and interestingly enough, they say they are releasing it this year and it will be in the awards conversation. So Oscar voters will have a chance to endorse Neon releasing this movie by voting for it for Best Picture.

**Peter Hamby** (4:02)
It feels like, this is your world, not mine, if the movie was better, there would have been more hype around this sale or more competition to buy it. I mean, CIA was shopping it around. Was this a sympathy buy by Neon here? Was it a good fit? Why Neon?

**Matt Belloni** (4:18)
There's a couple of things swirling around there. First off, we don't know what Neon has paid. It has not come out yet. There's a lot of speculation that they got a significant discount to take this movie on. It was a $40 million movie. Maybe even some financial help from Amazon to make this deal happen because it was worth more to Amazon to get this movie to another distributor than to be stuck with it and have to figure out what to do with it. Not confirmed, don't know that yet. But if this movie was great, I think there would have been a bidding war. Hollywood, maybe there was a hidden hand and a lot of these companies do have relationships with OpenAI. I mean, A24, which would have seemed like a natural home for this movie, they have Thrive Capital money and Thrive Capital is a big investor in OpenAI. Disney had a big deal with OpenAI and that fell apart. But Disney is trying to do business in that AI space and all of these companies, these big studio conglomerates have to be wary of what kind of relationships they want to have with the AI industry.