“I Want Your Sex,” a kinky thriller about a renowned provocateur artist and her naive new gallery assistant, has sold U.S. distribution rights to Magnolia Pictures.
Directed by Gregg Araki, “I Want Your Sex” stars Olivia Wilde as the dom to Cooper Hoffman’s sub in the boundary-pushing provocation that follows the two as they engage in a sadomasochistic relationship. The film was one of the talks of Sundance due to its racy nature; their on-screen affair is complete with ball gags, stilettos, whips, chains and a cornucopia of dildos, strap-ons and a comically disastrous threesome.
“I am over the moon and so grateful for the incredible reception at Sundance and Magnolia’s unadulterated passion for ‘I Want Your Sex,’” Araki said in a statement. “This has been a pure labor of love from day one and everyone at Magnolia is as pumped and excited as I am to get the film out there for audiences across the country to enjoy, react to and talk about.”
Magnolia landed the project for seven figures after a bidding war, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. The indie company has yet to formalize the release plans. Black Bear produced and financed the film in addition to handling international sales. John Von Thaden and Miranda Hill brokered the deal on behalf of Magnolia, with CAA Media Finance on behalf of the filmmaker.
“’I Want Your Sex’ is a wild romp that represents all the reasons we love going to the movies,” said Magnolia Pictures co-CEOs Eamonn Bowles and Dori Begley. “As huge fans of Gregg Araki, we’re thrilled to unleash his widest theatrical release yet.”
Araki wrote the script with Karley Sciortino and produced with Seth Caplan, Teddy Schwarzman, Michael Heimler, Courtney L. Cunniff and Sciortino. Co-producers are Beau J. Genot, Ezra Venetos and Tom Lee. Executive producers are Joanne Roberts Wiles, John Friedberg and Andrew Golov.
At the film’s Park City premiere, Wilde said she wished “more people made movies like [Gregg].”
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“I was so excited by Gregg’s enthusiasm for the medium, for the process,” Wilde told the crowd at the Eccles Theater. “[He] just said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get cool people together who want to tell a story, and let’s just do it. It doesn’t have to be a whole thing, and it doesn’t have to feel like this corporate project. It has to just come from the heart.’ I wanted to be a part of something like that.”
“I Want Your Sex” is Araki’s 11th feature at Sundance, having previously debuted such films as “Mysterious Skin” and “The Doom Generation” over the years. Meanwhile Wilde had another film at the mountain festival in “The Invite,” another sexually charged comedy which she directed and stars in alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz. A24 bought “The Invite” for more than $12 million after an old-fashioned, all-night bidding war.
Otherwise, only a handful of Sundance titles have found buyers in the weeks since the final Park City edition has wrapped. Conversion therapy thriller “Leviticus” sold to Neon for a price tag that’s reportedly in the seven-figure range, while “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!” landed at Sony Pictures Classics. Meanwhile, buzzy projects like “Wicker,” a fantasy comedy with Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage and Alexander Skarsgard, as well as the harrowing drama “Josephine” starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, have generated plenty of interest but have yet to sell.
In Variety’s review of “I Want Your Sex,” chief film critic Peter Debruge was mixed but praised Wilde’s “pure-camp performance.”
“Hoffman and Wilde’s commitment makes the film feel more important than it is. It’s better to think of this either as pure, irreverent escapism or a guiltless pleasure,” Debruge wrote. “There’s no important message or perceptive social insight to be gleaned from ‘I Want Your Sex,’ beyond Araki giving the kids enthusiastic permission to test their own boundaries. Once you get past the shock, the plot falls apart. But that hardly matters, since Araki’s achieved his main goal: getting a repressed generation to loosen up about sex by pushing the boundaries between profound and profane.”
From Variety US