A24’s The Invite Is the Marriage Comedy We Didn’t Know We Needed

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about watching a couple fall apart in real time — and A24’s “The Invite” leans into that discomfort like a warm knife through butter. Directed by Olivia Wilde and starring Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton, this is a film that uses the unassuming shell of a dinner party to rip open every anxiety, resentment, and unspoken desire that long-term couples bury under mortgages and small talk. And honestly? It’s kind of brilliant.

“The Invite” hits theaters in limited release on June 26, 2026, and if the press notes are any indication, this is going to be one of those A24 films people are still arguing about at brunch weeks later.

What Is A24’s “The Invite” Actually About?

Let’s start with the setup, because it’s deceptively simple. Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) are a married couple whose relationship is quietly unraveling. Angela invites their upstairs neighbors — the free-spirited, sexually adventurous Hawk (Edward Norton) and his partner Piña (Penélope Cruz) — over for a dinner party. Joe didn’t exactly get the memo. Cue one of the most cringe-funny, emotionally raw evenings you’ll see on screen this year.

What starts as an awkward social obligation slowly escalates into something much messier: a night of confessions, confrontations, and the kind of conversation most couples spend years avoiding. The film clocks in at 107 minutes — just enough to feel like you’ve been at that dinner table yourself, and not necessarily in a comfortable way.

Olivia Wilde’s Third Feature Is Her Most Personal

Wilde’s directorial debut, “Booksmart (2019),” was a crowd-pleasing coming-of-age film that earned her an Independent Spirit Award. Her follow-up, “Don’t Worry Darling (2022),” proved she wasn’t afraid to go dark and unsettling. With “The Invite,” she’s found a new gear entirely — intimate, dialogue-driven, and rooted in the kind of emotional specificity that only comes when a filmmaker is making something deeply personal.

The screenplay was adapted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (yes, the “Parks and Recreation” Rashida Jones, who also co-wrote “Toy Story 4” — she contains multitudes) from Cesc Gay’s award-winning 2021 Spanish film “Sentimental.” The material had already been adapted for Italian and Korean audiences before this American version came together. The bones were solid. McCormack and Jones just needed to make it feel lived-in for a U.S. audience, which by all accounts they absolutely did.

What makes Wilde’s attachment to the project especially interesting is that the script originally landed in her inbox as an acting offer. When it came back around as a directing opportunity, something clicked. She’s talked about becoming almost obsessed with the themes — marriage, agency, desire, the slow drift of a relationship away from what it once was. That obsession shows.

How Wilde Assembled This Dream Cast

Here’s where the behind-the-scenes story gets genuinely fun. Wilde had already decided she wanted Seth Rogen for Joe before she even locked the rest of the cast. The two happened to cross paths when Wilde was guest-starring on Rogen’s Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series “The Studio” — you know, the one that cleaned up with 13 wins including Outstanding Comedy Series. Rogen had been planning to focus on writing and producing, but Wilde’s pitch for The Invite was apparently impossible to turn down.

Edward Norton came aboard as Hawk, the retired firefighter with a complicated interior life. Norton has four Oscar nominations to his name at this point — “Primal Fear,” “American History X,” “Birdman,” and “A Complete Unknown” — so he’s not exactly short on options. The fact that he was enthusiastic about “The Invite” says something. He and Rogen have a history working together, and the appeal of doing something that was genuinely funny and emotionally raw was clearly the draw.

Penélope Cruz as Piña was inspired casting. Cruz is an Academy Award winner and one of the most technically gifted comedic actresses working today — a fact that gets undersold given how often she’s placed in prestige dramas. Here, she gets to use all of it.

And then there’s Angela. Wilde didn’t originally plan to play the character herself — she was actively looking for someone else to fill the role. It was Norton and Rogen who essentially turned to her and said, obviously, it should be you. She’s described it as one of the more vulnerable creative decisions she’s made.

The Unconventional Way This Film Was Made

Production on “The Invite” was genuinely different from your typical Hollywood shoot, and the details are worth knowing because they shaped the film’s texture. Before a single frame was shot, the entire cast and the writers spent two weeks in a workshop at Sunset Las Palmas Studios in Los Angeles — on the same stage where “I Love Lucy” was filmed, which Wilde seemed to regard as basically a spiritual omen.

They sat around a table, ad-libbed, argued, shared personal stories, and tore the script apart in the best possible way. McCormack and Jones were rewriting in real time, incorporating ideas from the cast daily. Renowned relationship therapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel served as a consultant, which makes complete sense once you understand what the film is actually wrestling with.

The shoot itself lasted only 21 days, and Wilde insisted scenes be filmed in chronological order — a choice that let the character dynamics develop organically rather than being assembled in the edit. She also shot on 35mm film using Panavision XL2 cameras. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (who won an Emmy for The Studio) worked with a custom lens set designed to feel both classic and contemporary. The result, by all accounts, is a film that looks like it belongs to a different, more deliberate era of filmmaking.

Why A24’s “The Invite” Could Be an Awards Contender

The crew list alone should give you pause. Production designer Jade Healy (“Marriage Story,” “The Green Knight”) built the San Francisco apartment set as a kind of emotional maze, all muted blues and greens, frames within frames, mirrors and doorways. Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations for The Favourite and Poor Things. Costume design comes from Arianne Phillips, a four-time Oscar nominee. The score is by Devonté Hynes, better known as Blood Orange, whose film work includes Queen & Slim and Passing.

This is not a film that was put together quickly. Every department head is operating at a high level, and Wilde clearly assembled the team she wanted rather than the team she was handed.

Should You Be Excited About A24’s “The Invite”?

Absolutely. This is A24 doing what A24 does best — taking a premise that sounds modest on paper and loading it with enough craft and emotional ambition to make it feel genuinely cinematic. A dinner party comedy about a struggling marriage isn’t a new idea. But with this cast, this director, and this level of production attention, The Invite has every chance of being something people remember.

Whether it becomes a sleeper hit or an awards darling probably depends on how it plays with audiences who may not be expecting to get their hearts cracked open at what they thought was a comedy. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

“The Invite” opens in limited release on June 26, 2026.