The Invite Budget

What Is the Budget of The Invite?

The Invite (2026), directed by Olivia Wilde and distributed by A24, does not have a publicly disclosed production budget. Neither A24 nor Annapurna Pictures, which financed and produced the film, has released an official cost figure. What is known points to a lean, contained production. The entire film was shot in San Francisco over just 23 days in May 2025, staged largely inside a single apartment and built around a four-person ensemble of Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton. Chamber pieces of this scale, driven by dialogue rather than spectacle, typically land in the low to mid single-digit millions before marketing, though the star salaries attached here would push the figure higher. Because no verified number exists, we do not list a specific budget; the film’s financial story is best told through its box office, where the figures are confirmed.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

Even without a published number, the cost drivers on a star-led chamber comedy like this are easy to identify. The money on The Invite would concentrate in a handful of areas:

• Cast Salaries: With Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton headlining, above-the-line talent is almost certainly the single largest line item on a contained production of this kind.
• Director and Writer Fees: Olivia Wilde directed from a screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, and those above-the-line fees account for a meaningful share before a single day of shooting.
• Production and Locations: The 23-day San Francisco shoot used practical locations including a middle-school auditorium, BART stations, and Mission District landmarks, incurring permits, crew, and local labor costs.
• Cinematography and Design: Adam Newport-Berra’s camerawork and the single-apartment production design demanded careful lighting and set dressing to sustain visual interest across a nearly real-time dinner party.
• Music and Post-Production: Devonté Hynes composed the original score, and editors Yorgos Mavropsaridis and Anthony Boys shaped the film’s escalating rhythm in post.
• Marketing and Distribution: A24’s platform strategy, expanding from a handful of screens to a nationwide footprint, carried its own prints and advertising spend on top of the negative cost.

How Does The Invite’s Budget Compare to Similar Films?

The Invite belongs to a small class of contained, ensemble-driven adult comedies and satires that trade spectacle for sharp writing and performances. Comparable recent titles show how far a modest budget can travel in this lane:

• The Menu (2022): Budget $35,000,000 | Worldwide $79,628,200. A single-location ensemble dark comedy that turned a mid-range budget into a strong worldwide multiple, proof that a confined, star-driven premise can overperform.
• Triangle of Sadness (2022): Budget $15,600,000 | Worldwide $24,733,572. Ruben Östlund’s caustic ensemble satire showed that a talky, uncomfortable comedy can ride festival prestige and word of mouth to a global specialty audience.
• The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): Budget $20,000,000 | Worldwide $49,300,000. Like The Invite, a dialogue-first, character-driven story that leaned on acclaimed performances and awards buzz rather than set pieces.

Against these benchmarks, The Invite is tracking as a healthy specialty performer. Even without a confirmed negative cost, a domestic run past $15 million for a contained four-hander suggests a budget comfortably recouped through theatrical alone.

The Invite Box Office Performance

The Invite opened on June 26, 2026, in a tightly limited release, playing sold-out engagements in Los Angeles and New York. It grossed roughly $379,000 in Los Angeles and $54,000 in New York City across just a handful of screens, one of the strongest per-screen averages of 2026. A24 then widened the film aggressively, and it broke into the domestic top ten before settling into a durable specialty run.

• Limited Opening (June 26 to 28): Approximately $379,000 in Los Angeles and $54,000 in New York City from sold-out platform screenings, among the year’s best per-screen debuts.
• Wide Expansion Weekend (July 10 to 12): Over $5,700,000 from 1,610 locations as the film expanded nationwide, entering the domestic chart at number six.
• Latest Weekend (July 17 to 19, Week 4): $3,905,908 from 2,110 theaters, holding at number six with a slim 34.1 percent drop.
• Domestic Gross to Date: $15,017,889 across the United States and Canada through its fourth weekend.
• Worldwide Gross: Surpassed $20,000,000 globally, helped by international runs including a United Kingdom opening of roughly $1,060,000.
• Production Budget: Not released by A24 or Annapurna, so a precise return-on-investment multiple cannot be calculated from public figures.

Without a confirmed budget, an exact profit multiple is impossible to state, but the trajectory is unmistakably strong for a specialty title. A lean, dialogue-driven chamber comedy has held the domestic top ten for weeks and pushed past $20 million worldwide on the strength of reviews and word of mouth. For A24, which acquired the film out of a Sundance bidding war, The Invite has become one of 2026’s most durable adult-audience releases, the kind of platform title that expands slowly and keeps earning long after its opening weekend.

The Invite Production History

The Invite began as an American reimagining of Spanish filmmaker Cesc Gay’s original film, adapted into a new screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. Olivia Wilde signed on to direct, a deliberate pivot toward a smaller, character-driven project. The production assembled a marquee ensemble: Seth Rogen and Wilde as the fraying married couple Joe and Angela, with Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton as their enigmatic upstairs neighbors Pina and Hawk. Principal photography took place in San Francisco, California, in May 2025 on a compressed 23-day schedule, with the cast shooting largely in chronological order to preserve the escalating tension of the single-evening story. Locations across the city included the A.P. Giannini Middle School auditorium, BART stations between Glen Park and Balboa Park, the Make-Out Room nightclub, the Castro District farmers’ market, and Molinari Delicatessen. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra shot the largely apartment-bound drama, and Devonté Hynes composed the score. The film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival on January 24 at the Eccles Theater, where strong reviews sparked a distribution bidding war that A24 won.

Awards and Recognition

The Invite entered the awards conversation immediately after its Sundance premiere and built momentum through its summer release. At the 2026 Astra Midseason Movie Awards, presented by the Hollywood Creative Alliance, the film won Best Screenplay for Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and Best Supporting Actress for Penélope Cruz, whose performance as Pina drew some of the strongest notices of the ensemble. As one of A24’s best-reviewed releases of 2026, the film has been positioned as an early awards-season contender in the screenplay and supporting-performance categories heading into the fall.

Critical Reception

The Invite arrived to some of the best reviews of any A24 release in 2026. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a Certified Fresh 96 percent approval rating from more than 240 critics, with an average score of 8.1 out of 10, and its Metacritic score sits at 82 out of 100, signaling broad critical acclaim. Audiences responded warmly too, giving the film a 93 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score and an 89 percent positive PostTrak rating in exit polling. Critics singled out the ensemble, praising the interplay between Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton as some of the sharpest work of their careers, and credited Wilde’s confident direction for keeping a single-setting story taut and unpredictable. Not every notice was a rave: NPR called the evening a disappointing one for characters and audience alike, and WBUR felt the film showed real promise before taking a misguided turn in its final act. The general-audience response ran a touch cooler than the critical consensus, with an IMDb user rating around 6.2 reflecting a more divided reaction to the film’s caustic tone.