Neon’s ‘Artificial’ awards push puts Yura Borisov, Andrew Garfield in the Oscar hunt
Neon is mounting an Oscars push for Artificial, splitting Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov into different categories—and the slots they’re chasing might surprise you.
The awards plan for Artificial flips expectations: Andrew Garfield will compete as a supporting actor, while Yura Borisov will run in lead for Luca Guadagnino’s drama about the power struggle at OpenAI, according to Variety. It ’s a tried-and-true move in Oscar season, where top-billed stars sometimes slide into supporting to make room up top — think Meryl Streep in Into the Woods or Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago.
Garfield will mount a supporting-actor campaign; Borisov goes lead.
Neon is mounting a full-court awards push, with Mark Rylance set for supporting actor as AI trailblazer Geoffrey Hinton and Monica Barbaro for supporting actress as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. The studio will also target best picture, director and below-the-line crafts, and back an original screenplay bid for writer Simon Rich, per Variety.
For Garfield, it’s a return to boardroom warfare more than a decade after The Social Network, where he memorably played ousted Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. He already has two best-actor nominations — Hacksaw Ridge (2016) and Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021) — but never scored for Social Network, adding a neat bit of symmetry to this season’s strategy.
Guadagnino’s film tracks the parallel paths of Borisov’s Ilya Sutskever and Garfield’s Sam Altman from Obama-era tech optimism to the moment their ideals collide with the real-world consequences of AI — building toward Altman’s headline-making ouster from OpenAI. The story spans years and shifting political climates as a partnership frays under the weight of its own invention.
Who’s playing whom
- Andrew Garfield — Sam Altman
- Yura Borisov — Ilya Sutskever
- Mark Rylance — Geoffrey Hinton
- Monica Barbaro — Mira Murati
Artificial makes its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, marking Guadagnino’s fifth NYFF bow after Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All, Queer and last year’s opening-night film After the Hunt. After its Lincoln Center debut, the movie heads to the BFI London Film Festival.