Luca Guadagnino’s directing career started in 1997, and as of this writing he’s racked up 41 released projects and 5 currently in some state of pre- or post-production. His career includes features, shorts, commercials, and music videos, although American audiences will recognize him best as the director of the 2018 Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay Call Me By Your Name, the 2018 remake of Suspiria, and 2024’s steamy psychodrama Challengers (aka That Movie Where Zendaya Plays Tennis and Bones).
And Guadagnino has been in the news this week after Amazon MGM Studios made the decision to drop his latest film, Artificial. A weird choice from a film industry perspective, given that Guadagnino has made a lot of money and gotten a lot of artistic goodwill for Amazon. On top of that, the movie was almost finished with a cast including Andrew Garfield, Ike Barinholtz, and an international cast of stars.
Side note: Man, tagging “Amazon” on the front of MGM Studios feels like “AOL-Time Warner” all over again.
Amazon was present for the entire development of the movie, too — seeing multiple drafts of the screenplay and running test screenings (where the audience reaction was largely positive). But even with everything going for it, Amazon made the decision to drop the movie which reportedly features unsympathetic depictions of both Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
That means the timing is getting a lot of attention. Amazon, of course, is not a film studio. They just own a film studio. They’re a technology company. And they happen to be a technology company that inked a deal with Altman and OpenAI earlier this year where Amazon invested $50 billion in the company.
Now, that sort of backroom dealing isn’t anything new in the industry. It wasn’t even anything new when RKO was biting its nails over Hearst threatening to ban their ads from his newspapers unless they cut Citizen Kane. And unlike Welles, Guadagnino’s movie has the option to seek out someone else for distribution.
Perhaps there’s Netflix — nope, wait, they’ve been pretty vocal about how much they love the idea of using AI and never having to pay a writer again. How about A24? They like the artsy kinda flicks that get critical acclaim and awards and– dammit, they just partnered with Google AI, so they’re probably not eager, either. Well, Mubi’s interested, at least. It may not have the biggest studios behind it, but Artificial is going to be seen. With the kind of pedigree and money it has behind it, it’s not going to fade away into the darkness.
What interests me about the story, however, is the poison pill hidden in the initial reporting that seems to have gotten less attention. Maybe it did back in February, when Amazon and OpenAI’s deal was first reported. But it bears some looking at.
See, OpenAI’s deal with Amazon will, in part, expand OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services. And in exchange for that and the money, Amazon will get custom AI models.
Where’s the poison in that pill? Ah, as any environmentalist who looks at the water tables can tell you — or any gamer who was hoping to buy a Steam Machine, for that matter — AI models have proven they’re the best at doing exactly one thing. That would be consuming resources. Home PC enthusiasts have watched AI’s demand for chips ramp up costs of GPU’s, RAM chips, and even the good ol’ block of spinning rust to the point where you might have to sell a kidney to run DOOM.
It’s not really a stretch to say that Amazon Web Services is the backbone of the entire freakin’ internet. The thing that our society has become increasingly dependent on for work and play, both. Disruption to one software package or one AWS data center can cause large chunks of the internet to stop working until the problem has been repaired.
So, yeah, hidden away in a story in the entertainment section is just a little tidbit that the folks who own the internet’s foundation are out here cutting deals to ensure that it gets hammered hard by the most resource-hungry beast technology has ever spawned.
I’m sure nothing bad will come of that.
Featured photo by Cristian Jako