Olivia Wilde: Theaters Still Can't Handle Onscreen Sex
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- Olivia Wilde has two films bowing this summer: A24's The Invite (select theaters now, wide July 10), which she directed, and Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex (July 31), in which she stars
- The Invite is a remake of the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs about two couples at a disastrous dinner party; Wilde co-stars opposite Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz
- I Want Your Sex casts Wilde as a performance artist who begins an affair with her younger assistant, played by Cooper Hoffman
- The Invite sparked a bidding war at Sundance and sold to A24 for $12 million
- Wilde told Rolling Stone that audiences embrace sexual content at home (pointing to HBO Max's Heated Rivalry) but remain nervous about it in theaters, a dynamic she likens to Paul Mazursky's 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
- Therapist Esther Perel helped shape the sexual dynamics in The Invite, according to NYT Arts — a craft-and-consultant angle the Rolling Stone interview does not surface
Why it matters: Wilde's framing positions theatrical exhibition as the last cultural holdout against publicly consumed sexual content — a $12 million A24 bet on The Invite suggests the marketplace is testing whether audiences will follow streaming's lead into the multiplex.
