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The film, billed as a biographical dramedy, tells the story of a chaotic boardroom crisis at OpenAI in November 2023, when co-founder Altman was fired and then re-hired at the AI giant.

Andrew Garfield stars as Altman, with Anora‘s Yura Borisov playing Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientific officer and co-founder of OpenAI who fires Altman. Monica Barbaro plays Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of OpenAI, and Cooper Hoffman plays Greg Brockman, the board chairman of OpenAI. Ike Barinholtz stars as Elon Musk, the other co-founder of OpenAI.

The cast also includes Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Mark Rylance, Zosia Mamet, Billie Lourd, Angus Imrie, Nicholas Hamilton and Thaddea Graham.

Artificial was written by humorist and Saturday Night Live alum Simon Rich. The film was developed at Amazon MGM Studios before Guadagnino was hired to direct it. Amazon MGM notoriously ended up dropping the film several days after parent company Amazon signed a deal a $50 billion deal with OpenAI.

Neon picked up Artificial in a unique deal in which they paid nothing up front but committed to a $15 million marketing spend.

Guadagnino’s film comes at a time when Hollywood is applying much greater scruitiny to Silicon Valley’s tech titans. In recent weeks, Alex Gibney has released Musk, a searing documentary about the polarizing trillionaire, and this past Sunday, Aaron Sorkin premiered The Social Reckoing, a followup to The Social Network, with another unflattering look at Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Also coming up in Nathan Fielder’s acclaimed docudrama You Can See Everything, about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Artificial hits theaters on Dec. 25. Read on below for early social media reaction to the film.

In one ad, Trump says, "We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all".

The ads come just ahead of the pivotal November midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of one or both chambers of the US Congress as polls continue to show Trump's approval rating falling. Midterm elections often serve as a verdict on how a president is doing - and typically the party of a sitting president tends to lose seats in Congress.

The White House has pushed back against criticism, calling the ads "educational" and saying they are not propaganda, but rather public service announcements.

They've pointed to previous administrations ads, like those under former Presidents Barack Obama on his healthcare plan and one under former President Joe Biden urging people to get Covid-19 vaccines.

But legal experts say past US government adverts have typically been about public health or national emergencies.

"It's difficult to see what legitimate government purpose is served by spending taxpayer dollars on ads whose only apparent purpose is to promote the president," legal ethics expert Margaret Dylus-Yukins has told the BBC.

Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire introduced a measure, which was blocked by a Republican, denouncing the administration for using government funds for for the ads.

"It is the sense of the Senate that the advertisements promoting President Donald Trump that aired in September 2026, which included the direct language 'paid for by the U.S. Government,' should not be paid for by the United States government," the measure reads.

The ads have received criticism on both sides of the aisle.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Monday that while "I like the message ... it shouldn't be paid for with taxpayer dollars".

Senator John Kennedy, a Republican, said on CBS News on Sunday that politicians should not spend taxpayer funds on promotional ads.

"I don't think any public official, including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves," the Louisiana lawmaker said. %!s()

In a post on his social media site on Monday, Trump defended the advertisements, which cost at least $1.5m in federal funds and were aired ahead of the US November midterm elections.

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Trump said he considered the advertisements to be “a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.”, but that they would no longer be funded by taxpayers but by either him or his MAGA PAC,

MAGA Inc. is Trump’s political war chest and had amassed more than $400m by the end of July.

The announcement came as ethics experts and lawmakers from both ⁠parties have criticised the three nationally broadcast advertisements and called for independent investigations.

The advertisements have run during football games as recently as Sunday and during other programming.

One features Trump declaring that “America will never be a communist country”, ⁠while a chorus repeats the words “love me”. Another combines ⁠images of Mount Rushmore with footage of Trump praising a “golden age of America”.

The advertisements end with a disclaimer saying they were paid for by the US government.

Democratic lawmakers said last month that the White House transferred $20m in Homeland Security Department funds to air ⁠the advertisements, including one that closely resembles a 2024 Trump ⁠campaign ad, and sought independent probes.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday called ‌for an independent investigation, calling it a “staggering misuse of public funding and breach of public trust” after the calls for a probe.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, a ‌Republican ‌named to his position by Trump, last week said the advertisements were appropriate and rejected a request to investigate them. %!s()

“I read your article, and I’m curious about WHY it got buried,” the individual wrote. “I’ve liked most of the Tom Cruise movies. I don’t have A/C at home, and I’d welcome the chance to spend a few hours in a cool theater! But until Sunday night, I simply hadn’t heard about it. Why weren’t my friends talking about it?”

Indeed, Digger bottoming out at the box office has led to plenty of questions, not just from casual Cruise supporters but industry insiders as well. Sources tell THR that there is a pervasive sense of sadness among the Warner Bros. team about director Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s film having drastically failed to find an audience. THR has heard from those on the lot who enjoyed Digger so much that they saw it multiple times and were hoping for general audiences to give it a chance as well.

Alas, Digger goes down as an ambitious effort that will come nowhere close to breaking even. After third-party tracking suggested weeks ago that it could open with $30 million domestically, the satirical black comedy grossed an anemic $8 million while adding just $12 million from 73 international markets. Centering on Cruise’s titular oil tycoon having caused a natural disaster, Digger’s initial production budget was $125 million but has been reported to have climbed closer to $180 million, although a Warners spokesperson disputed this figure. The studio spent around $100 million on marketing for the project that also starred Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller.

Digger was the talk of CinemaCon in April, with palpable excitement and cautious optimism from attendees surrounding Cruise — known to take chances with character-driven films earlier in his career before setting his sights on action-packed tentpoles — disappearing into the part of a balding, portly, unlikable billionaire. As Iñárritu and Cruise took the CinemaCon stage to debut the movie’s first footage, the filmmaker teased the film as a “high-wire act,” which sadly proved rather prescient, given its eventual box office plummet.

“Tom Cruise has always been a risk-taker,” Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian tells THR. “The challenge is that having Cruise as the star doesn’t automatically make a film a mainstream blockbuster. With a lower budget and a more limited release, the performance of Digger would have been perceived differently. But given the context within the framework of how this film was released and the reported budget, it was obviously put under a spotlight, comparing it to the star’s past hits.”

It’s hard to assess whether a tweaked strategy would have made much of a difference for Digger. Following in the footsteps of Warner Bros.’ 2025 release One Battle After Another — which has been celebrated for winning the best picture Oscar, despite its hefty budget meaning it didn’t turn a profit — Digger skipped a splashy festival premiere. This led to debate surrounding whether Warner Bros. felt burned that critics lambasted its Joker: Folie à Deux after the high-profile sequel and eventual flop debuted in Venice. That said, a festival launch might not have added significant sheen to a film that ultimately earned a C+ CinemaScore and holds a 51 percent approval from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes, with THR chief film critic David Rooney dubbing it “dead and buried.”

Interest in the movie crumbled in the 10 days leading up to its release, and with the writing on the wall, the film’s marketing pivoted to almost relishing the divisive nature of the response. One promotional video posted to social media highlighted the negative responses as Cruise’s character declared, “Fuck those people,” while another ad suggested that European audiences were more appreciative of the film than Americans (although Digger’s international gross appears to expose that claim as cold comfort).

“Tom Cruise remains one of the most influential actors and theatrical champions of all time, and he’s certainly earned the right to take this type of creative swing,” notes Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder Shawn Robbins. “You never know how the story around certain movies will unfold, so perhaps the ‘decide for yourself’ marketing campaign goes on to have some meaning with viewers over time.”

This represents quite the low note in Warner Bros.’ swan song as a stand-alone studio, as its merger with Paramount Skydance is expected to be finalized in the coming days. Along with titles like this year’s The Bride!, Digger was not the only ambitious project from departing Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy that struggled to land with audiences. Of course, one’s Hollywood standing can change rapidly, and last year was a much different story, thanks to acclaimed Oscar-winning originals like One Battle, Sinners and Weapons.

As for Cruise’s next moves, audiences can expect him to eschew bids for now for that elusive first competitive Oscar and return to IP-driven vehicles that involve the star, well, driving fast-moving vehicles. He and co-star Anne Hathaway — whose thriller Verity far surpassed Digger in ticket sales this weekend — will soon begin filming Paramount’s Days of Thunder 2 for director Jonathan Levine, while Paramount continues to tease a follow-up to the 2022 smash hit Top Gun: Maverick. Digger gives Cruise his second consecutive money-losing effort following Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, given the massive budget for last year’s pricey Paramount sequel.

One thing that remains certain is that Cruise, among the industry’s most ardent supporters of the theatrical experience, is acutely aware of the magnitude of Digger’s limited return on investment. A few years back, filmmaker Zack Snyder told THR that in March of 2006, he first learned of 300′s impressive box office from a Sunday morning congratulatory call from Cruise himself, who was not involved in the historical epic but simply jazzed to observe its success. Clearly, box office figures mean a lot to Cruise, and it’s safe to say that he has given plenty of thought to these latest results and where his high-flying path will take him next.

“Digger has provided a reality check on how the business works in today’s unpredictable movie marketplace environment,” adds Dergarabedian. “There are always lessons to be learned when a film like Digger doesn’t connect with audiences as expected, but hopefully this doesn’t stop Cruise from taking chances on more challenging material. He still has many years to go in his career to move between mainstream action films and true originals.”

Borys Kit contributed to this report. %!s()

Temperatures will plunge from the low 20s to the mid-teens. Wednesday could be the first day since June when temperatures stay below 20C across the whole of the country.

A spell of rain and stronger winds will accompany the colder air, adding to the autumnal feel.

But the cooler spell is not expected to last, with temperatures set to rise towards average over the weekend.

Noticeable change to October's warm start

Cloud, rain and strong winds affecting parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland will spread further south on Tuesday.

This band of rain and cloud will usher in much cooler air, setting the scene for a distinctly autumnal Wednesday.

Temperatures on Tuesday could still reach 19-21C in the south-east, but northern and western areas will be much cooler, with highs mainly in the low to mid-teens.

The change will be particularly noticeable after such a warm start to October with Monday offering a final taste of summer-like conditions for southern and central parts of England and Wales

Temperatures fall further into Wednesday and Thursday

By Wednesday, the autumn chill will be firmly established and it is expected to be the first day since 11 June when temperatures fail to reach 20C anywhere in the UK.

Cooler north-westerly winds will bring sunshine and scattered showers to many areas, while rain could be heavy and persistent for a time across south-eastern England and East Anglia.

Temperatures will fall into the mid-teens across much of England and Wales. Scotland could see highs of just 10-13C.

The wind will also make it feel colder than the thermometer suggests, particularly around eastern coastal areas.

While mid-teen temperatures are perfectly normal for early October, the sharp contrast with the warmth of recent weeks is likely to make the change feel much more dramatic.

Thursday will start off chilly with mist and fog patches along with frost in places.

However, the day will bring some welcome sunshine as a temporary area of high pressure moves across the UK.

Temperatures are expected to reach around 14-16C in southern areas, with Scotland struggling to get much above 10-12C.

By Friday, Atlantic weather systems will bring further rain and stronger winds, although temperatures will recover slightly, reaching 16-18C across much of the south.

Cool snap will be short-lived

The cooler spell is not expected to last and temperatures should return towards average over the weekend and even slightly above average again next week.

But after such an extended period of warmth, this week's change may be the moment autumn finally feels as though it has arrived.

You can check your local weather forecast, including the expected feels-like temperatures, on the BBC Weather website and app. %!s()