Seth Rogen Says New Sundance Hit Is The Kind of Movie That Terrifies His Studio Character
Exclusive: Seth Rogen says Olivia Wilde's new Sundance hit, The Invite, is also the type of movie that scares character Matt Remick into making Kool-Aid.
The Sundance Film Festival is, of course, an opportunity for movie lovers to experience the best in independent cinema. It is also a chance, however, for distributors to discover or launch the next low-budget sensation. A few such movies can even trigger a bidding war when it wows enough festivalgoers and acquisition executives. Such is the phenomenon occurring right now around The Invite, a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs and a laugher about a married couple who finds themselves invited to the swinger parties held by their neighbors. After a reportedly uproarious world premiere over the weekend, The Invite has drawn offers from A24, Focus Features, NEON, Netflix, and Searchlight Pictures (with Deadline now reporting the final bids coming down to A24 and Focus).
Yet if there’s one studio player who would not be invited to The Invite party, it’s Matt Remick, the head of fictional Continental Studios on the Apple TV series The Studio. Just ask the actor, writer, and showrunner who created him.
“He would probably be too cowardly to make a film like this,” Seth Rogen tells Den of Geek contributors Geri Courtney-Austein and Harley Bronwyn out of Park City. “He’s more IP-oriented, known brands, known things. He would like to think he would make a movie like this, but at the end of the day, he probably would not.”
Hot off his Emmy win for playing Remick on The Studio, Rogen stars in The Invite as Joe, who begins to rethink his marriage to Angela (Olivia Wilde) when they’re invited to the orgies hosted by neighbors Pina and Hawke (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton).
The idea of Remick passing on The Invite is as humorous as it is emblematic of a Hollywood industry that rarely makes comedies anymore, and which leaves even well vaunted filmmakers like Olivia Wilde, who also directs and co-writes The Invite, to launch their vision at indie-friendly film festivals. Remember that her first film as a director, Booksmart, also broke out as an indie out of SXSW in 2018.
While speaking to Den of Geek, Wilde contends comedies like The Invite couldn’t be more important right now. “Comedy is medicine and it has been for thousands of years,” the director says. “People are dying for a release, and it brings us together and allows us to be vulnerable. It connects us. There is nothing better than that feeling of ‘I thought it was just me.’ That’s the best laugh, to realize ‘On no, that wasn’t just me [who felt that way]!’ So we hope that is what is delivered through the film.”
Writer Will McCormack, who co-wrote the screenplay with Wilde, would seem to agree.
“I’m so happy and proud to be a part of a comedy that’s here at Sundance and hopefully out in the world soon, because I can’t get through life without laughing,” says McCormack. “Even in the hardest and darkest times of my life has been some of the funniest, because we just need to excel and laugh. So I really hope comedies make a return to movie theaters, because we’ve been short on them in the last few years. So maybe The Invite is bringing them back?”
Hopefully, it does. And if it happens, it won’t be because of the Matt Remicks of the world, but we can be sure he’ll be tracing the trend in season 2.