The Invite on HBO Max: U.S. Streaming Date, Cast and Film Background

The streaming debut is in the United States

Warner Bros. Discovery set Friday, October 23, 2026, as the date The Invite would begin streaming exclusively on HBO Max in the United States. Its release notice also scheduled an HBO linear-channel broadcast for Saturday, October 24, at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Those are two different windows: the film is already available to U.S. HBO Max subscribers, while the cable-channel showing follows the next evening. The announcement names the country, so it does not establish the same date for every territory.

Four neighbors bring different tensions to the table

A24’s synopsis begins with a couple whose relationship is under strain inviting their neighbors to dinner. The cast is Olivia Wilde as Angela, Seth Rogen as Joe, Penélope Cruz as Piña and Edward Norton as Hawk. Wilde directs, while Rashida Jones and Will McCormack wrote the screenplay. That compact setup puts four people in one social situation rather than following several separate storylines.

The Guardian’s review adds concrete context to the invitation: Joe is a former band musician who now teaches music at a liberal arts college, and the dinner follows renovation noise at the couple’s home. It also says Joe lives in his late parents’ apartment, while Angela prepares what she considers a casually elegant evening. Piña is a therapist and Hawk an ex-firefighter; the reviewer presents them as more socially assured than their hosts. These details map the social awkwardness onto particular jobs and domestic circumstances rather than a generic dinner-party setup. The article uses the review’s framing, not first-hand viewing, and leaves the evening’s ending out.

The Invite moved from cinemas to several home formats

A24 lists June 26, 2026, as the film’s U.S. theatrical opening and gives its length as 1 hour 47 minutes. The company’s home-viewing page offers rental or purchase through the A24 App, which it says works on a phone, laptop, Apple TV or Roku, and it also lists other home options. Warner Bros. Discovery’s October 23 date is a later subscription-streaming window on HBO Max. These listings describe different routes to the same film, not a single worldwide release schedule.

The Guardian’s June 30 review listed a July 3 U.K. release and a July 9 Australian release. Those dates show how the theatrical calendar varied by market; they should not be read as dates for HBO Max in those countries. The article’s question is therefore best answered in layers: June 26 was the U.S. cinema opening, October 23 the U.S. HBO Max debut, and A24’s page lists separate rent-or-buy access. The official streaming notice does not give equivalent international platform dates.

A24’s page also points to Blu-ray and 4K editions and says a disc purchase includes A24 App access. That physical release is separate from both an HBO Max subscription and an on-demand rental. The page therefore gives viewers more than one at-home path: subscribe, rent, buy digitally or choose a disc. It does not present those options as one universal catalogue, so local store listings remain relevant for availability.

The dinner-party story has crossed stage and screen before

The Invite is not the first version of this story. The Guardian identifies Cesc Gay’s Spanish film The People Upstairs as its source and says that film began as a stage play. Third Coast Review names the 2020 film Sentimental, which circulated in English-speaking markets as The People Upstairs, as the earlier screen version behind Wilde’s adaptation. Taken together, the two reviews trace the route from a play to Gay’s Spanish-language film and then to this English-language production.

That history matters because the current film has a distinct set of credited makers: Wilde directs, and Jones and McCormack receive the screenplay credit from A24. The source relationship gives viewers a way to understand why the story is built around a dinner and four neighbors, but the available sources do not claim that the dialogue or staging is identical across versions. There is no need to watch the earlier film first; this article uses the lineage as context, not as a scene-by-scene comparison.

The Guardian also notes that the Spanish film had already been remade in Korea before this American adaptation. That places The Invite within a sequence of cross-market versions, rather than presenting it as the first translation of a self-contained story.

Wilde connected the release to comedy and theatrical exhibition

In a July note published by A24, Wilde says the film was shot on 35mm and argues that comedies deserve theatrical releases alongside more serious films. She writes about taking a 35mm print on the road and names the Castro in San Francisco, the Music Box in Chicago, the Coolidge in Boston and the Vista in Los Angeles. Her account gives a specific picture of the film’s cinema tour rather than a general claim that the movie was designed for a large screen.

Wilde also describes the print as six reels and talks about the projectionists who presented it. That is the director’s first-person account of how the theatrical run was handled; it is not a measurement of audience response, nor does a 35mm production format promise that a home stream uses the same presentation. Still, the detail makes the release path notable: a film promoted through a celluloid cinema tour later reaches a subscription service and rental storefronts.

A24’s disc editions add bonus features and format options

A24 Shop lists a standard Blu-ray and an exclusive 4K UHD edition with a slipcover. Both are pre-orders, and the 4K option is exclusive to A24 Shop. Bonus features include commentary with Wilde and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, “Setting the Table: The Making of The Invite,” deleted scenes, a composer featurette with Devonté Hynes and six behind-the-scenes postcards photographed by Atsushi Nishijima. That is new at-home context beyond the streaming date: the disc packages include production material. A24 Shop

The product page lists the same 107-minute runtime and R rating for both editions. Standard Blu-ray is 1080p widescreen in 1.85:1 with 5.1 sound; the 4K UHD version adds Dolby Vision HDR. Both list English SDH, Spanish subtitles and English descriptive audio. A24 says the 4K disc requires a 4K Blu-ray player, and HDR playback requires a compatible 4K television. These specifications help buyers check whether a home setup supports the higher-resolution format. A24 Shop

The Shop marks the discs as pre-orders, but its current page does not provide a shipping date. A24 App rental or purchase and HBO Max are separate home-viewing paths; the disc listing is the source for these bonus features and playback specifications. A disc extra should not be assumed to appear in a streaming edition. A24 Shop