Director and star Olivia Wilde explained why she had fought for a theatrical release over a lucrative streaming deal for her hit comedy The Invite.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of a Locarno Film Festival Piazza Grande screening for the film tonight (August 8), Wilde said the industry has been mistaken in believing that comedies now only work on the small screen and not in cinemas.
“I really feel that there’s no genre that benefits from the communal experience more than comedy. It’s an ancient part of our culture as humans. We’ve gathered and told stories and laughed together for 1000s of years in different forms, in different ways. I felt that comedies had been relegated to this kind of second tier that didn’t deserve theatres.”
From the very beginning, Wilde aimed for theatrical release, choosing to shoot the movie on 35mm film. “I was very passionate about shooting it on 35mm. I hadn’t been able to do that yet, and I thought this is the one I’m going to really fight for. It was as though comedies didn’t deserve to be as beautiful,” said Wilde.
She said the distribution sector seems to have come to an understanding that comedies work best on the small screen, but noted that audiences have never said that. “I actually don’t know why we lost perspective on that, but I felt very strongly that I wanted the audience to have that communal catharsis.”
The Invite, which co-stars Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, famously sold to A24 for north of $12m for domestic rights after a bidding war following its Sundance premiere earlier this year.
It has so far taken over $40m worldwide since it was first released at the end of June, including over $23m at the US box office and $4.6m in the UK, with more territories still to come and the press dubbing it a rare summer hit comedy.
Wilde said: “I wanted to investigate this phenomenon that we found at Sundance when we felt the film have that chemical reaction with the audience for the first time. It was extraordinary. I thought, ‘Well, this is magic. We have to listen to this, and we have to fight for it.’
Wilde reteamed with Megan Ellison’s Annapurna to finance and produce The Invite after working together on her directing debut Booksmart.
She said that many producers and financiers will take the up-front money from a streamer over a theatrical distribution deal.
“They [the streamers] bribe you to not take theatrical. It’s a bribe. You get paid more. Not me. Not the filmmaker. The film, the financiers will get a lot more money to go to streaming, and you can take that bribe and give that up if that’s where your priorities lie.
”But we were really lucky that our financier gave me the opportunity to make this decision, which is something I don’t take lightly. She could have very easily said, ‘No, we’re going to go with a much bigger offer.’ But I know that she too felt this incredible reaction that had happened at Sundance, and that it was something worth investing in. We really believed that audiences deserve to discover this together.”
“I’m obviously really passionate about it, but if I had been passionate about it alone, it wouldn’t have meant anything, I was passionate about it with a lot of support, which was great because we were able to take the correct offer from A24, and they’ve been extraordinary because they really do believe in the in the theatrical game. And of course, Film Nation made the international deals around the world, all theatrical. So all these great distributors around the planet have invested in this film being seen in theatres. So I am very grateful.”
Wilde said she was particularly excited to see the film in Locarno in the Piazza Grande in front of 8,000 people.”Today is very special for me and for all of us because I was hoping we’d be seen in a few theatres, maybe a couple of hundred people in a theatre. And tonight we’re going to watch it with 8,000 people. I actually can’t believe it. I’m in shock.”
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