The movie industry trade publications are buzzing that SF will be the backdrop of a forthcoming movie about Sam Altman getting fired and rehired at OpenAI, and it’s likely going to be a comedy starring Andrew Garfield.

Hey, remember those four days back in late 2023 when Sam Altman got fired as OpenAI CEO, there was an employee revolt at the company because of it, so Altman engineered his return and was quickly rehired, with the board members who fired him getting canned instead?

We never really got the whole story on that behind-the-scenes brouhaha, but apparently Hollywood is taking it on. The Hollywood Reporter says that there’s an OpenAI movie in the works about it, which will be partially shot in SF, and will come from Amazon/MGM Studios.

The Hollywood Reporter says the film will be called Artificial, and the film will likely be a comedy. The script, which is already written, was written by former Saturday Night Live writer and Pixar staff writer Simon Rich. Rich happened to be a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg in the early 2000s, and also wrote the 2020 Seth Rogen HBO comedy An American Pickle.

They’re reportedly lining up quite a cast too, though none of these people have actually signed contracts yet. Sam Altman is slated to be played by Andrew Garfield, who starred in last year's We Live in Time, and of course played Spiderman in The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man: No Way Home.

SF native Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown) is attached to play former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, and Yura Borisov, the good-guy Russian gangster from Anora, has been tapped for the role of Ilya Sutskever, the board member who pushed for Altman’s ouster.

And the film is likely to be somewhat shot in San Francisco. The Hollywood Reporter says "Amazon is looking to get production going this summer, with an eye to shoot in San Francisco and Italy."

So will this be a real movie in theaters, or a straight-to-Amazon-streaming movie? It's hard to say this early on. Amazon/MGM Studios has released some big theatrical movies (Zendaya’s Challengers, the Oscar-nominated American Fiction, and last Christmas’ smash-hit romp Red One), though many of the studio’s releases do just go straight to streaming.

Related: Sam Altman Back at OpenAI as CEO, Most of Board Gets Replaced [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 02: Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center on June 02, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Snowflake Summit 2025 runs through June 5th. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)