Seth Rogen's New Psychological Relationship Thriller Officially Takes Over HBO Max

The countdown to the 99th Academy Awards is on, and several names are already being lined up as favorites. Christopher Nolan‘s epic adaptation of Homer‘s The Odyssey remains the front-runner, with some even suggesting it is the heir to the throne of Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners, which broke the record for the most nominations earlier this year. Nolan’s last big project, the biopic Oppenheimer, stormed the 2024 ceremony, winning seven of its 13 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director prizes.

The most surprising competition for The Odyssey is the sudden smash-hit documentary You Can See Everything, which looks set to become the first Best Picture-nominated doc of all time. The Andrew Scott-led Elsinore, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi‘s La Bola Negra, Martin McDonagh‘s Wild Horse Nine, and Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord all also pose a threat to The Odyssey, but several other titles are quietly gaining momentum on the hunt for a surprise inclusion in the Best Picture category. This includes Olivia Wilde‘s The Invite, one of the true gems of 2026.

A remake of the Spanish-language comedy The People Upstairs, this must-watch jewel in the 2026 cinematic line-up also stars Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz, alongside Wilde, who is making her third directorial effort following her debut Booksmart, and Don’t Worry Darling. Recently, The Invite made its way to a brand-new streamer and is already proving a major hit. At the time of writing, Wilde’s latest is the most-watched movie on HBO Max in the U.S. It also ranks as the most-watched movie on Paramount+ in Australia.

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

How Much Did ‘The Invite’ Make at the Box Office?

Not just a critical darling, The Invite also proved a commercial success earlier this year, as strong word of mouth helped keep the film relevant during a competitive box office window. Against a reported $15 million budget, the film returned over $60 million worldwide, split between a domestic haul of $26 million and a further $34 million from overseas markets. The Invite opened in sixth place in the box office ranks after its wide release, even managing to earn more than the horror phenomenon Obsession in its first weekend.

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The Invite