Olivia Wilde says the worst reviews of her last film opened the door to the next one. After Don’t Worry Darling landed at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, Wilde says she felt liberated while making The Invite, her third feature as a director.
That is why the film is being talked about now. After its Sundance Film Festival premiere, Wilde is describing not just what she made, but how she made it: a chamber comedy set inside a single San Francisco apartment, shot in 21 days, in story order, on film. She asked the cast to work for nothing for six weeks so the experiment could hold together.
The setup was as tight as the movie’s frame. Wilde confined The Invite to one apartment and leaned on design to make it feel lived in. Jade Healy conjured the space in a single weekend, and Arianne Phillips dyed Wilde’s blouse to match the walls. Seth Rogen is a major part of the cast, and Wilde called his performance a career peak, comparing it to Albert Brooks and 1980s Richard Dreyfuss.
Wilde’s argument is simple enough. Failure can strip away the pressure to please, and she says that is what happened after Don’t Worry Darling. But she also wanted control over almost every part of the new film’s life, from the six unpaid rehearsal weeks to the release plan. She said every distributor wanted to take the movie to theaters, and she was adamant it would not go to a streamer.
That pull between freedom and control is what makes the project interesting. Wilde says she was liberated by the backlash around Don’t Worry Darling, yet The Invite was built through exacting choices about time, space and distribution. It was made to feel looser on screen only because everything around it was so tightly managed. The film is now distributed by A24, and the next question is whether that theatrical push turns the gamble into a wider return for Wilde after the bruising reception to her 2022 drama.
