You no longer have to use ChatGPT to imagine what OpenAI CEO is Sam Altman‘s so-called doomsday bunker could look like.
On Tuesday, NEON, the independent studio that brought “Parasite” to North America, released the first look at Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial,” a star-studded film expected to explore OpenAI’s chaotic period when Altman was briefly ousted from the company in November 2023.
In the roughly one-minute trailer, Andrew Garfield, who plays Altman, is seen walking and bouncing before entering a bunker with walls filled with cannons and other supplies. Most of the trailer features a voiceover from Garfield talking about the future of AI.
“We opened Pandora’s box together,” says Garfield. “The future is inevitable. Countries will fall. Industries will collapse. And we will be the ones to lead people into this new world. I’m so excited to see it.”
In a 2016 “New Yorker” profileAltman explained how he prepared for his survival is one of his hobbies, also in the possible scenario that AI turns against humanity.
“I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, Israeli army gas masks and a large piece of land in Big Sur that I can fly to.”
Garfield’s monologue culminates in a confrontation between Altman and Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov. Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, helped lead the effort to remove Altman.
Since then Altman has tried to downplay it both his interest in preparation and the extent to which his plans included a bunker.
“I have nice structures, but I wouldn’t say a bunker,” Altman said during a live interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2023.
When Altman repeated the same phrase to comedian Theo Von in 2025, the popular podcaster made it difficult for OpenAI’s CEO to quibble over the definition.
“I’m going to let you, I’m going to let you string me along on a lot of this conversation, but I’m going to call that like a fucking bunker, dude,” Von said. “Sam, that’s a bunker.”
Altman said he had “underground, concrete heavy, reinforced basements.”
“I don’t have what I would call a bunker,” Altman said, adding that he had thought about the topic “not because of AI, but because people are dropping bombs on the world again.”
When OpenAI’s CEO expressed confusion about the difference between a basement and a bunker, Von’s staff asked ChatGPT.
OpenAI’s chatbot supported the argument that Altman does indeed have a bunker.
No more uncertain future
Like Altman’s five-day fiasco in 2023, it was equally unclear what would happen to Guadagnino’s film. In June, Amazon MGM Studios has dropped the film directed by the filmmaker “Call Me by Your Name”. Neon, which also released “Anora,” the best picture at the 2025 Academy Awards, later intervened.
Amazon’s move came three months after it announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI.
The film will be released in select theaters on Christmas Day. According to The Wrap, it will get a wider release in January.
“Artificial” marks Garfield’s return to the world of Big Tech. In 2010, he played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network,” which received a Best Picture nomination.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a fellow bunker owner, is famously not a fan of the film.
