Neon unveils its Oscar campaign for “Artificial”: Andrew Garfield for supporting actor, Yura Borisov for lead actor

Neon has decided the Oscar campaign strategy for “Artificial”, Luca Guadagnino’s drama about Sam Altman and OpenAI: according to an exclusive by Variety, the studio will campaign Andrew Garfield in the supporting actor category for his role as Altman, while Yura Borisov — who plays the company’s co-founder and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever — will be campaigned in the lead actor category.

The campaign extends beyond the two leading names as well. Mark Rylance, the Oscar winner who plays artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, will join Garfield in the supporting actor race, while Monica Barbaro, who plays Mira Murati, will campaign for supporting actress. According to Variety, the studio plans a full campaign in all the major categories, including best picture, director, Simon Rich’s original screenplay and the technical departments.

The irony of the story has not escaped analysts: sixteen years ago, Garfield played the Facebook co-founder who was pushed out of the company he had helped to build in “The Social Network” — and lost the supporting actor race. Now he plays the chief executive ousted from OpenAI, who managed to persuade the board to restore him five days later. “Different man, different company. Same category, hoping for a different ending”, Variety writes.

The announcement comes a day after the world premiere at the 64th edition of the New York Film Festival, where the first reactions were enthusiastic. Critics called the film “provocative”, a “visceral corporate drama” and Guadagnino’s best film in a decade, according to TheWrap. Critics at Next Best Picture particularly praised Garfield’s performance as one of the most chilling and transformative of his career, while they called Borisov “magnificent”.

“Artificial” follows the leadership crisis of November 2023, when Altman was suddenly dismissed by OpenAI’s board and restored five days later, and the tensions with Sutskever. The project began at Amazon MGM Studios, but the company withdrew after a major partnership with OpenAI itself; after Netflix, A24 and Focus turned it down, Neon took it on and sends it to cinemas on December 25. Altman himself, in an interview for Vanity Fair, called “very strange” the experience of seeing Garfield “dressed exactly like me, with the same backpack” during filming near his home.