How Indie Comedy ‘The Invite’ Crashed The Summer Blockbuster Party; Is The Next Stop Broadway?

As the curtain closes on an upbeat summer box office, the team behind The Invite has reason to cheer. The indie comedy is a breakout, grossing over $55 million worldwide as of last weekend amid behemoths like The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Unusually, it’s a pretty even split between U.S. and international coin.

A24, which nabbed domestic rights in a days-long bidding war at Sundance for a sum north of $10 million, has taken the film — directed by and starring Olivia Wilde with Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Ed Norton — to $25.6 million. International totaled $29.7 million from 50 territories including Canada, according to FilmNation, and that’s without Italy and France (both opening September 16) and Spain, where The Invite originated (launching October 16).

“It’s incredible to see a comedy become an international hit, and with major territories still to release, the global momentum behind The Invite is just getting started,” says Glen Basner, founder and CEO of FilmNation, which handled international sales and produced the film alongside Permut Presentations and Megan Ellison’s Annapurna. Annapurna financed it.

Producer David Permut sees The Invite is connecting with moviegoers for a few reasons: “It’s hysterically funny — and it’s wonderful to hear audiences laugh out loud like they have all over the world. It’s also got emotion and heart. It takes a mirror to all of our relationships, past and present, even though you may not identify specifically with the characters and what they’re going through.”

In a summer dominated by blockbusters and franchises, this one-room set piece is proof adult comedies can still break out on the big screen, says a source close to A24, which opened The Invite Stateside in late June 26 to $380,000 at seven theaters in New York and L.A. — one of the top limited debuts of the year. It expanded to 1,600 screens by week 3 with consecutive berths in the top 10 and great reviews. (Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 96%), see Deadline’s.

Wilde and Rogen star as struggling married couple Angela and Joe, raising their young daughter in a bespoke San Franciso apartment inherited from Joe’s parents. He’s a frustrated musician, she’s a fraying stay-at-home mom who’s invited upstairs neighbors Piña and Hawk (Cruz and Norton) for dinner. She preps desperately. Joe protests, the nightly racket from the bedroom upstairs has been ticking him off. The doorbell rings, The Invite is off and running.

“It’s combustible. You’re wondering what is going to happen with these four individuals, these couples getting together,” says Permut, who’s been making films of all sizes for the last four decades with credits ranging from Hacksaw Ridge to Face/Off to The Polka King. He hits TIFF on September 10 with the fest’s opening-night selection Being Heumann, from Apple and directed by Siân Heder.

The Invite, available on streaming since mid-August, is winding down in theaters, on about 60 screens through the end of next week.

Fans may get another crack at it — live — as Permut says he hopes to take the play to Broadway next year. He declined to elaborate. “I can’t right now, but I can tell you that we’re going to be doing it. That was always my intention. First to cut the umbilical cord with our movie, get that out the world. And now we’re starting to focus on the Broadway production. Nothing specific yet.”

That would take the story full circle as The Invite was born as a Spanish stage play called The Neighbors Upstairs (Los vecinos de arriba) by playwright, director and filmmaker Cesc Gay. “A woman who lived above him in Barcelona was making a lot of noise at three in the morning,” says Permut. “And they weren’t moving furniture. The passion is coming through the ceiling to Cesc and his mate downstairs. That’s where the seed of the idea was born.”

Gay followed the play with Goya Award-winning film Sentimental, which premiered at TIFF in 2020 titled The People Upstairs. Permut watched it (at home, it was Covid and the fest was virtual) and says he immediately jumped on the phone with a distributor in Spain and with Gay, acquiring English-language rights to both film and play.

He brought aboard Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, directors of 2006 hit Little Miss Sunshine. He asked Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who wrote and starred in Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012), to adapt the screenplay. The cast came together with Amy Adams and Paul Rudd downstairs, Tessa Thompson and Pedro Pascal above. Then the Hollywood strikes hit and “by the time things got going again, everybody’s schedule had changed. So we reinvented it.”

Permut loved Wilde’s first feature, the Annapurna-produced Booksmart (2019), and they’d met once and hit it off. “I never forgot it because she was so incredibly perceptive,” he says. He reached out to her about directing and “she was the perfect fit… with the reshuffled deck, with the great script that Rashida and Will had written.”

“Olivia is such a rare talent. Making Booksmart together, we saw it right away in her creative instincts and in her humanity. There was never a doubt she’d take it even further on The Invite,” says Annapurna’s co-head of film Chelsea Barnard.

Casting Wilde as Angela wasn’t intended but Permut says he’d just come off a great experience working with James Sweeney wearing multiple hats on Twinless. “I’ve done 40 movies, but never with an actor, director and writer on the same one until [Sweeney], who delivered a home run for us … I thought the part fit her perfectly, so I advocated very strongly that Olivia step into that role.”

The Invite was the first movie to shoot in L.A. after the devastating wildfires and, at the time, the only stage in operation at Hollywood’s Sunset Las Palmas Studios. Post was in London. The budget was under $15 million. “We wanted to make it for a price,” says Permut. “Everybody took the haircut. We all shared the same passion.”