Olivia Wilde’s I Want Your Sex tanks at box office — here’s why

Let’s be honest: if you were hoping for a repeat of Olivia Wilde’s box office magic, I Want Your Sex has not delivered. The film came in with some critical heat, but audiences haven’t bothered to show up, making it one of 2026’s bigger commercial flops in a year absolutely stuffed with bigger blockbusters.

I Want Your Sex has only earned about $600,000 worldwide after launching in roughly 700 cinemas.

The Numbers – Not Pretty

For context, Box Office Mojo puts the film’s total global gross just above $600k, and that’s after a proper (if modest) rollout in more than 700 cinemas. Decent critics’ reviews haven’t moved the needle—and that’s in sharp contrast to Wilde’s last relationship thriller, The Invite, which picked up momentum week-on-week and eventually hit $38.5 million globally. The Invite stuck around in 792 cinemas even on its fourth weekend, while I Want Your Sex never saw anywhere near that scale, opening in fewer than 1,000 screens against films like Spider-Man 4 (which practically swallowed every multiplex with a 4,500-screen count).

• The Invite started at $379k, leapt to over $700k its second week, and scored a whopping $5.93 million in its third weekend—before continuing to pick up millions more each week.

In comparison, I Want Your Sex has basically flatlined out of the gate.

The Film Itself

Wilde steers back into provocative waters in I Want Your Sex, under the direction of Gregg Araki. The film follows Cooper Hoffman’s Elliot, a young would-be artist, whose life upends when he starts working for Wilde’s character, controversial creator Erika Tracy. What looks like a dream job goes sideways after Erika picks Elliot as her new sexual muse, inviting him into her risky, boundary-pushing world—the sort of story you’d imagine could drum up some discussion online, but it’s failed to catch fire with cinema crowds.

That may be down to a couple of factors: the film is rated R, which automatically narrows the field of potential punters, and the marketing campaign was so restrained you’d almost miss it. It didn’t help that it had to battle for screens and attention against a pileup of big-league releases—Moana, Spider-Man 4, The Odyssey, Minions & Monsters, plus Wilde’s own The Invite cannibalising the same audience.

Crew, Cast, and Response

The cast isn’t short on talent: Cooper Hoffman joins Wilde, with Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Charli XCX and more filling out the ensemble. Critics have genuinely appreciated the result—I Want Your Sex holds an 89% rating from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. Regular punters, though, have been split, with a 60% Popcornmeter showing audiences didn’t quite warm up to the film the way the critics did. Compared to The Invite’s Rotten Tomatoes score (97% critics, 7.9/10 IMDb), the divide seems especially sharp.