Artificial , starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is winning praise from critics who screened its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Monday night.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and originally produced by Amazon MGM Studios, Artificial hit a major roadblock on June 19 when the studio dropped the project .

“We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter about the decision to drop the film. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”

Eleven days after Amazon MGM dropped Artificial , indie studio Neon acquired the film for worldwide distribution. The first teaser trailer for Artificial — which will open in theaters on Dec. 25 — was released in early September.

The early reviews for Artificial are shedding more light on the plot of the film, and as it turns out, it’s about more than Altman. In his review for Variety , Owen Gleiberman — who describes Artificial as a “brilliant but playful docudrama” — writes that the film begins in 2003 and “goes back to the earliest days of AI and shows you how the technology was invented, how it was developed, how it was dreamed .”

Referencing the pending release of writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network sequel The Social Reckoning , Gleiberman writes in his review that “the real sequel to The Social Network is Artificial , Luca Guadagnino’s sprawling, enthralling, brain-spinning drama about the creation of artificial intelligence.”

Joining Garfield in Artificial are Yuri Borisov ( Anora ) as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Mark Rylance ( Don’t Look Up ) as Professor Geoffrey Hinton , aka “The Godfather of AI.” Artificial also stars Ike Bariholtz ( The Studio ) as billionaire tech giant Elon Musk and Monica Barbaro ( A Complete Unknown ) as AI engineering expert Mira Murati.

What Are Rotten Tomatoes’ Critics Saying About ‘Artificial’?

As of Tuesday midday, Artificial has received a 91% “fresh” critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Here is a sampling of some of them:

Owen Glieberman, Variety : “As you watch the film, AI comes alive as a subject. It becomes real — you touch what it is, what it means, what the stakes are. The result is a movie that’s at once inspiring and deeply chilling, and when it’s over you’re in a different place.”

Zachary Lee, The Wrap : “This film may be the world’s obituary, but in its thrilling, creative and provocative telling, it also reminds exactly what makes human beings – and their art, specifically – special.”

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast : “If its tonal unevenness sometimes undercuts its urgency, it’s still an engrossing lament that we’re forever doomed to repeat our mistakes—until, that is, we’re literally doomed.”

Pete Hammond, Deadline : “Working from a screenplay by Simon Rich, Guadagnino makes this all something of a dark comedy that becomes so frightening it is hard to laugh.”

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter : “This ranks among Guadagnino’s best work, its dry humor lulling us into a relaxed state of enjoyment before the sword comes down on the scary reality we’re now facing.”

Tim Grierson of Screen International is the only critic so far on RT to give Artificial a “rotten” score. He writes in his RT review summary, “Although the picture taps into the anger and anxiety surrounding AI, Simon Rich’s screenplay fails to offer any real insight into the deeply flawed humans who have gotten obscenely rich foisting this volatile technology upon the world.”

Rated PG-13, Artificial opens in theaters on Dec. 25.