EXCLUSIVE: A24 has won the multi-party bidding war for Olivia Wilde and Annapurna’s buzzy Sundance Film Festival film The Invite. The title was won with a competitive eight-figure deal after a 72-hour marathon bidding battle. The bids started at $10 million and climbed upward. Word was that Wilde wanted a theatrical release.
It was a three-horse race after Warner Bros‘ new contemporary film label headed by former Neon marketing guru Christian Parkes put in a last-minute bid against A24 and Focus Features. Now, A24 has the film. Previous bidders on the project included Netflix, Neon and Searchlight.
Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling had a near $20M opening at the fall 2022 box office, juiced by good word of mouth and leading man Harry Styles.
The Invite reteams Wilde with Megan Ellison and Annapurna, who produced Booksmart.
The Wilde-directed romantic comedy follows two couples. Joe and Angela (Wilde and Seth Rogen) are on thin ice, and tonight might be when it all falls apart. Unfortunately, their upstairs neighbors (Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz) are about to arrive for dinner, and everything that can go wrong goes worse.
Wilde shot the The Invite in chronological order, approaching the Rashida Jones and Will McCormack-adapted movie like a play.
The director told Deadline Awards Editor Antonia Blyth at Sundance that the Sundance premiere “was the best night of my life, it was so fun. To sit and laugh with that audience was just so wonderful, so full of joy. I was just levitating in my seat.”
UTA Independent Film Group and FilmNation co-repped the sale. Wilde is repped by CAA, Untitled, Narrative and JSSK. Cruz is also at CAA. UTA reps Norton, Rogen, McCormack and Jones.
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