Olivia Wilde has a horny comeback at Sundance

Olivia Wilde’s feature directorial debut, Booksmart, was a warmly received comedy back in 2019. She took a swing, opening it wide in the summer, and it did not pay off at the box office but the people who saw the movie loved the movie. And it was a promising start for her as a director. Then, three years later, Don’t Worry Darling.

The Don’t Worry Darling gossip eclipsed the actual film. It’s not a great film but it’s also not terrible, it’s just that all the noise around it, at the time, overshadowed the project. Looking back, though, the DWD drama seems almost innocent in comparison to all the sh-t that’s blown up since. Still, Olivia's public image took a hit from the mess, fueled by Harry Styles fans who were motivated by their disdain for their relationship to amplify what they perceived to be Olivia’s shortcomings. So, yes, while it was legit that Florence Pugh wasn’t f-cking with her, the online hate that was mobilising towards Olivia from that toxic corner of Harry’s fandom made the story that much bigger. And then “Spitgate” happened, when social media became convinced that Chris Pine spat on Harry at the DWD Venice premiere. Plus of course all the accusations coming from Olivia and Jason Sudeikis’s former nanny which gave us the salad dressing.

It was a LOT. And it was, under those circumstances, impossible for Olivia and Harry to stay together. Once they broke up, that particular faction of Harry’s fans redirected their energy elsewhere, like Taylor Russell. Olivia then retreated, it’s been a quiet-ish couple of years, at least from a front-facing perspective, but she’s been working the whole time. Her episode of The Studio last year was excellent and self-deprecating, as she played “herself”, a director sabotaging her own work, perhaps in a round-about way addressing the speculation that she abandoned her duties on DWD because she was too horny for Harry.

Interestingly, though, horny might be a way to describe her comeback. She was at Sundance this weekend with two projects – for a role in Gregg Araki’s film I Want Your Sex and for directing her third film, The Invite, in which she also co-stars alongside Penelope Cruz, Seth Rogen, and Edward Norton. The Invite was cowritten by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, about two couples at a dinner party that may or may not turn into an orgy. It’s a comedy that meditates on monogamy and commitment, and the reviews so far have been outstanding, it received a standing ovation at the screening, and now…

New from Sundance: There was an old-fashioned all-night bidding war overnight for Olivia Wilde’s THE INVITE….and it’s not over. Distributors still jockeying, so this one will sell for a lot.
— Matthew Belloni (@MattBelloni) January 26, 2026

In a post about Olivia last summer, I wrote that “this too shall pass” and it would appear that in her case, it has. A bidding war for a film at Sundance is basically the dream, this is the best outcome for Olivia, and I’m not mad at it. None of that gossip from almost four years ago should have been a career killer even though, for a female director in Hollywood, it could have been. That’s not to say that when The Invite is released, the people who love to find something to bitch about on social media won’t drag up that sh-t again, but she worked through her setbacks. And now that the work is being celebrated, it’s that much more satisfying.

Olivia was one of several celebrities wearing “ICE OUT” pins at Sundance – in her case just hours after Alex Pretti was murdered by the thugs calling themselves federal agents in Minneapolis.