Andrew Garfield’s Sam Altman goes full Psycho according to early buzz for OpenAI drama Artificial

The Halloween season is fast approaching, so it’s fitting that there’s a new crop of scary films headed our way.

Only these aren’t focused on your classic movie monsters like Dracula & Frankenstein, but rather the real-world ghouls at the top of the tech industry, who are using their unchecked power to shape society to their own terrifying whims.

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In the next two weeks alone, we’ll have the release of documentarian Alex Gibney’s damning exposé of Elon Musk’s rise, comedian Nathan Fielder’s mysterious tête-à-tête with Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and a Social Network sequel called The Social Reckoning, which will explore how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has helped turn the internet into an increasingly fraught place.

And then there’s Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming dark dramedy about the terrifying rise of OpenAI under gay co-founder Sam Altman.

We’ve been incredibly intrigued by the film from the jump: After all, what was the out filmmaker behind hot-blooded romantic films like Call My By Your Name & Challengers doing directing a movie about soulless tech bros? Not to mention an incredible cast led by Andrew Garfield as Altman, with plenty of other rising talent in the mix, like MONSTER‘s Cooper Koch, I Want Your Sex‘s Cooper Hoffman & Anora breakout Yura Borisov.

But now that Artificial has had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, we’re even more eager to see it, with early word calling the film “bitingly funny, deeply unsettling” and possibly “the most urgently relevant film of our time.”

And though we might be hesitant to label this a “queer film,” it seems Guadagnino has managed to bring hos queer sensibilities to this story.

For example, an early trailer showed Garfield’s Altman awkwardly bounding through his massive mansion while countless shirtless hunks could be spotted lying about in the background. In a recent Vulture interview feature, the filmmaker clearly relished assembling the “twunks” to bring this cinematic vision to life.

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As for Altman, it doesn’t sound like the film concerns itself too much with the entrepreneur’s sexuality, or private life in general (though apparently his husband Oliver Mulherin does appear as a character), but there’s already been plenty of talk about the uncanny way Garfield portrays him, bringing his mannerisms and specific way of speaking to the screen.

It’s being hailed as career-best work that could earn the 43-year-old star an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor: Garfield is “mesmerizing, strange and terrifyingly seductive,” says The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Canfield. His fellow critic David Rooney calls the performance a “diabolically clever” dissection of the “demon twink” archetype: “Whatever sorcery the makeup or effects department has performed to put the glint of sociopathic madness in Garfield’s eyes, it works.”

To prepare for the role, Garfield says he didn’t meet with Altman directly, but did speak with as many people as possible who have known him, and spent hours and hours watching videos of the OpenAI founder in public interviews, speeches, etc.

“I remember seeing Sam testifying to Congress for the first time, way back when,” Garfield shared at Artificial‘s world premiere. “I was like, ‘This guy seems f*cking great. He’s honest. He’s transparent. He’s talking about regulation, and he has no stake in OpenAI. We need more of these people in control. He’s incredibly charming and charismatic.” And then you learn more about a person…”

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No one’s pretending this is a flattering portrayal of Altman, yet Altman for his part seems strangely blasé about the whole thing. In a recent interview with Vanity Far, the tech mogul even conceded that it might be a good movie, albeit one that “will not be good as an accurate depiction.” He also claims he coincidentally saw Garfield filming the movie outside his house one day—and thought he nailed his signature odd walk at least!:

“One morning I was walking down the street to get coffee,” he shares, “and there were all these cameras and there was a guy dressed exactly like me with my same backpack walking so much that I felt I was in some weird glitch of the simulation or something.”

See Sam Altman’s ‘Artificial’ comments and more in his two-part interview with Vanity Fair: https://t.co/YGwqITPV7V https://t.co/wzwqsYyLXS— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) October 6, 2026

And apparently there’s someone else Garfield’s portrayal of Altman might remind you of, too: Psycho momma’s boy Norman Bates, played by the late, great—and gay!—Anthony Perkins.

In a piece for Variety, awards pundit Clayton Davis claims that Perkins “turned Norman Bates into the most likable monster the movies have ever produced,” and notes that, 66 years later, the spirit of that performance seems to have inspired Garfield:

“Perkins understood that Norman only works if the audience likes him,” Davis writes. “Garfield builds his Altman the same way. Sitting almost constantly crisscross-applesauce, his voice stays soft, as his eyes get wide and he listens intently, as if he’s completely fixated on the human being in front of him. Until, suddenly, the life drains from his eyes, sometimes for barely a second, and returning before anyone else in the scene notices. But the audience does. And that’s when you realize the movie has been giving you all the clues you need to recognize the monster you’ve been spending time with, and it reveals himself by the end credits.”

It’s a fascinatingly complex comparison, especially when you consider that Perkins’ spellbinding Psycho performance feels specifically informed by the way he was forced to navigate the world as a closeted gay man.

And now here we have straight actor Garfield (who does slightly resemble Perkins, we’ll say!) playing Altman, a man who is indeed out, but—at least in Artificial‘s portrayal—is one attempting to hide a part of himself, too: that he might be a monster in the making.

Early buzz on Artificial indicates that Sam Altman could follow in Norman Bates footsteps to become one of the most iconic movie villains of all time. As for whether or not he’s a real-world villain, well… let’s hope people wake up to that possibility before it’s too late!

Artificial won’t officially open in U.S. theaters until December 25, but stay tuned for all the latest on what’s sure to be one of the most talked about films of the year.

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