Seth Rogen faces the worst invite a couple can get
Olivia Wilde’s new comedy The Invite puts Seth Rogen opposite Wilde as a San Francisco couple hosting neighbors who propose opening their marriage. The dinner-party sex comedy, written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, is in theaters now—and critics say the story is messier than a simple ode to polyamory.
Key Takeaways
- The Invite stars Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz as two couples over one fraught San Francisco dinner.
- Screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack adapted the setup from the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs.
- Norton and Cruz’s characters invite Rogen and Wilde’s married pair into a sexual arrangement that exposes cracks in both relationships.
- Jones and McCormack frame the film as a sex comedy that is really about being seen, heard, and valued in long-term love.
What happens in The Invite with Seth Rogen?
In The Invite, Wilde plays Angela, a San Francisco housewife raising a preteen daughter with Joe, a former musician turned teacher played by Seth Rogen. One night they host upstairs neighbors Hawk and Piña—Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz—for dinner and charcuterie that grows increasingly awkward and sexually charged.
According to Newsweek, Piña is a sex therapist, and the visiting couple reveal a secret: they want Angela and Joe. The Free Press’s Kat Rosenfield calls that premise the horror of inviting a “sexy polyamorous psychotherapist” in—then watching the marriage’s existing cracks widen.
Rosenfield notes the film is in theaters now and argues it looks like “another millennial ode to polyamory” but is “actually something much messier”—a more tragic, complicated portrait of sex and marriage than other work on similar ground.
Why does the dinner-party premise matter now?
Newsweek frames Wilde’s comedy as a rare theatrical adult film willing to put open marriage and polyamory at the center of a smart, funny story about what modern couples want. It cites Pew and Census figures on marriage’s retreat and a 2025 YouGov poll in which close to a third of Americans prefer something other than complete monogamy.
NPR reports the script is inspired by The People Upstairs and unfolds over one night as the stories the couples tell themselves fall apart. Will McCormack told NPR the movie is “a sex comedy that’s not really about sex,” but about “wanting to be seen and heard and valued” after living with someone for so long.
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Who wrote The Invite, and how did they build it?
Rashida Jones and Will McCormack—actors and longtime writing partners—penned the screenplay. They met decades ago after McCormack’s sister, actor Mary McCormack, set them up on a date that failed as romance but launched a creative partnership.
In an NPR interview published July 13, 2026, Jones said the pair share a conversational “clip” and “rhythm,” while McCormack joked they are “like brother and sister who dated briefly.” Jones tied the film’s focus on relationships and middle age to what they care about most: living with others, parenting, loss, and “looking straight down the barrel of the back half of life.”
They attended the Los Angeles premiere on June 23, 2026. Whether viewers read The Invite as cultural permission for open marriage or as Rosenfield’s messier tragedy, Seth Rogen’s Joe sits at the center of a dinner invite few couples would envy.