After a good old-fashioned Sundance bidding war, Olivia Wilde’s latest movie The Invite has landed at A24.
The sale is the biggest of the festival so far and seems unlikely to be eclipsed. It comes after at least one all-night bidding session and saw multiple distributors vying for the title, including Neon, A24, Focus and Netflix. Tuesday saw a late-in-the-game push by Warner Bros.’s newly launched indie label, which hoped to make a statement with a splashy buy. In the end, A24 prevailed in a eight-figure deal
The relationship comedy, a remake of the Spanish language movie Sentimental, stars Seth Rogen, Ed Norton, Penelope Cruz and Wilde. It centers on a couple (Wilde and Rogen) whose relationship is on the brink of collapse and have an ill-timed dinner party with their enigmatic neighbors (Norton and Cruz), whose relationship seems to have the passion and open communication that the former’s is sorely missing.
The audience at the Saturday night premiere at the Eccles gave the film a standing ovation, while the critics praised the movie, Wilde’s third directorial effort following Booksmart (2019) and Don’t Worry Darling (2022).
Reads The Hollywood Reporter Sundance review, “When it’s cooking, which is most of the run time, this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage, dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open.”
Talking to THR ahead of the festival, Wilde said that she chose to make the film outside of the studio system to allow for more freedom when it came to the production, including filming in Los Angeles, shooting in order and weeks of rehearsals.
Said Wilde, “It was the kind of experience I’ve been dreaming of my whole career — a movie that would just allow a group of creative people to come together and actually, truly collaborate.”
The movie also reteams Wilde with Megan Ellison and Annapurna, who produced her directorial debut Booksmart.
UTA Independent Film Group and FilmNation co-repped the sale. CAA reps Olivia and Penelope, and UTA reps Rogen, Norton, Will McCormack and Rashida Jones.
