Sam Altman vs. Elon Musk: Coming Soon to Theaters
OpenAI’s chaos and Musk’s vendetta are already Hollywood scripts, with Amazon writing the checks.
There's something odd going on with tech in Hollywood lately, and it has everything to do with the compression of time. Specifically, there is a growing trend toward developing films and series about technology icons that more closely follow the cadence of social media currents. Studios are attempting to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle of current tech business events, and memes rather than adapting stories that have built up over decades and historically receive grander, more measured treatment.
In the past, the stories about the epic battles between Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple founder Steve Jobs, as well as Mark Zuckerberg, took many years to slowly boil to a froth worthy of major studio investment and the attention of top-tier directing and acting talent. However, this is no longer the case. This has been evident in the relatively swift development of recent films and TV series based on tech moguls including Uber founder Travis Kalanick (Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, Showtime, 2022), disgraced (and jailed) Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (The Dropout, Hulu, 2022), and controversy-plagued WeWork founder Adam Neumann (WeCrashed, Apple TV+, 2022).
The aforementioned tech startup stories mostly came about in the last 15 years, which may be a long time in Silicon Valley, but in the normal business world, that's just a blip, and historically not enough of a development arc to justify major theatrical productions. But as I said before, time has been compressing. We are now going through yet another crunch in time compression with a couple of new projects based on major tech business stories set to debut in the coming months. These stories began less than a decade ago.
The most monumental project in the works is a film called Artificial, by director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name and Challengers). The film will focus on the events of 2023, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was the target of a corporate takeover that resulted in his removal from his executive seat, only to be swiftly reinstated after a dramatic series of events behind the scenes in Silicon Valley. Following his reinstatement, a slow exodus of some of OpenAI’s co-founders and top executives began in the following months, most notably former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and former Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever.
While all of this was going on, the entire business and tech media world followed the whirlwind daily tick-tock of events at the company. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, an early investor in OpenAI and the CEO of Tesla/SpaceX/xAI, continued to wage war against Altman and OpenAI for what he believed to be a betrayal of the company’s original mission that resulted in him being effectively blocked from significant influence in its future.
But again, I must point out how incredibly unusual this film adaptation is: The events depicted in the film took place a mere one year and nine months ago! That's about as close as you can get to a theatrical film covering current business events as we've ever had. Making this production even more unusual is the fact that it's being distributed by Amazon MGM Studios, the company founded by Jeff Bezos. The ever-giggling Amazon mogul is also one of Musk's chief rivals in the space race with Blue Origin, and a growing competitor in the AI space versus both Musk and Altman.
And if there's any doubt that the producers behind this film are looking for a major win, both financially and critically, look no further than the fact that they've cast Andrew Garfield in the role of Altman. You might know Garfield from his previous tech mogul role in the Oscar-laden film The Social Network (2010), in which he played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.
It looks like Musk might be in line for most of the bruises, as he will be played by Ike Barinholtz, who is sometimes cast as a bit of a sneaky weasel character.
Casting the usually sympathetically framed Garfield (who also delivered one of the more vulnerable portrayals of Spider-Man) as Altman indicates that the OpenAI co-founder may not get the brunt of the usual anti-tech onscreen schadenfreude that has become common in recent years. No, for that, it looks like Musk might be in line for most of the bruises, as he will be played by Ike Barinholtz, who (I love you, Ike, sorry!) is sometimes cast as a bit of a sneaky weasel character. His latest breakout role is as Sal Saperstein in the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series The Studio.
As for real-life former OpenAI-er Murati, who just raised $2 billion for her Thinking Machines AI startup, she will be played by Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick, A Complete Unknown). Likewise, Sutskever, who raised $3 billion for his Safe Superintelligence company, will be played by Yura Borisov (seen in the multiple Oscar-winning 2024 film Anora).
At this rate, next week’s tech headline could be next year’s summer blockbuster. We already know that Darren Aronofsky (also now in the AI game) has secured the directing chair for the A24 Musk biopic based on Walter Isaacson‘s book. There’s even some chatter that filming may begin this fall. But considering the events of the last 24 months involving Musk and President Trump, I’m guessing the script might look a lot different from where it began in 2023, when the book’s rights were first snatched up.
ONE MORE THING: Just as filled with controversy and interpersonal drama, but much lesser known is the story of Tinder dating app co-founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who went on to create Bumble in 2014. She became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2021 at the ripe old age of 31. She recently predicted that AI would become a part of dating app culture. “There is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge,” said Wolfe Herd. “And then you don’t have to talk to 600 people.”
Like Artificial, Wolfe Herd’s ascent is amazingly recent compared to mythic business stories of old that have gotten the big screen treatment. Her story, titled Swiped, directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, will debut on Hulu on September 19.