Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman's 'I Want Your Sex' Is a Love Letter to Gen Z

3 hours ago 11

Published Feb 4, 2026, 10:00 AM EST

Summary

Collider's Perri Nemiroff talks with the team behind Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
Araki and stars Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding Jr., and Chase Sui Wonders visit the Collider interview studio to discuss joining the project and Araki's unique world, as well as why the director's portrayal of sex is important.
Araki discusses how I Want Your Sex is a sex-positive "love letter to Gen Z" and shares how the story evolved over a decade.

At long last, Gregg Araki has returned with a new feature film. Best of all, he hasn't lost an ounce of his gonzo energy and iconoclastic spirit. One of the defining voices of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s, Araki's style of black comedies and hard-edge thrillers raised awareness of LGBTQ causes and issues and gave characters who would be marginalized in studio films complex and free-spirited leading roles.

The writer-director of Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation has returned to the Sundance Film Festival in its final year in Park City, Utah, for the premiere of his audacious sex comedy, I Want Your Sex that promises to be a "sex-positive love letter for Gen Z," according to Araki. The film centers around an age-gap romance between a renowned artist, Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), and her so-called sexual muse, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), who is taken on an outlandish journey into the world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal, and murder. I Want Your Sex features a robust cast that also includes Chase Sui Wonders, Mason Gooding, Johnny Knoxville, Margaret Cho, and Charli XCX.

At the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Collider's Perri Nemiroff sat down with Araki, Hoffman, Wonders, and Gooding to discuss I Want Your Sex, filming intimate scenes, and the film's connection to Araki's previous work, notably the Teen Apocalypse trilogy. When it comes to watching the film, Araki said it best: "You gotta watch it in a packed theater of horny people."

'I Want Your Sex' Is Reclaiming Erotic Cinema for a New Generation

"Why aren’t you having sex?"

Olivia Wilde looks at a costar in a still from I Want Your Sex.

It took a considerable amount of time for I Want Your Sex to evolve into the film it eventually became, with Araki first being pitched a concept loosely framed as a "comedy version" of 50 Shades of Grey. However, as he explains to Collider, the original draft went through several iterations to become the film it is today. In Araki fashion, I Want Your Sex is "a sex-positive love letter for Gen Z, encouraging young people to go out there and live your life, live your best life, and get some in the process. There's been plenty of discourse surrounding sex scenes in movies in 2026, but I Want Your Sex is here to remind audiences why sex-positivity is more important to emphasize than ever before, with younger audiences' complicated relationship with portraits of eroticism on screen.

As for how the film evolved over the years, Nemiroff was curious about the decade-long process to get this feature off the ground, and Araki tells Collider:

"Well, this is really not anything new. I think I first read the script in 2014, and it was kind of a completely different movie at that point. Cooper's character was the girl, and it was a male boss, and it was pitched to me as sort of a 50 Shades of Grey, like a comedy version of that. So, that script, I had developed it.

I've written probably 11 drafts of the script, and the film really evolved a lot through that process. There was a version that we were going to make around 2015 or something, and then, as indie movies do, they fell apart. So that, I guess, was a bit of a low, but it's not anything unusual."

Gregg Araki discusses I Want Your Sex at the Sundance Film Festival 2026.

He continues:

"For this movie, it changed all over the years, but the span of time actually really helped us, because with the development of the movie, it just became something. Like, all of the early drafts of the script don't have the mansion in it. They don't have the murder in it. They don't have the body in the pool.

Most importantly, it was around 2020, I guess, that, besides flipping the sex roles in the post-Me Too world, I started reading these articles that are mentioned in the movie about Gen Z not having sex, and why aren't they? So, in a way, the Erika Tracy character became sort of a spokesperson for me, going to Gen Z, “What's going on? Why aren’t you having sex?” And then Elliot could answer for his generation what's going on. So, that became, very much, the theme of the movie."

In the movie, in addition to Hoffman's Elliot, Wonders and Gooding also represent the voice of Gen Z, offering different perspectives. During the interview, Nemiroff recalled a quote by Wonders where she said, "I'll do a sex scene like that any day of the week. If it's just about how hot people look, that's not interesting to me." Below, Wonders expands on her thoughts and on performing sex scenes with a raw emotionality:

"I'm glad you pulled that quote, because I do think it's true. That is my character's big scene, and the reason it's so interesting, and I was immediately like, 'I'm in on this whole world,' is because sex contains multitudes. It's true. It can be really funny or really awkward, or suddenly you can be staring into the abyss of your life, or it can be super casual and then flip it on its head, and you're like, 'Suddenly I'm gobsmacked and in love with this person,' or suddenly, 'I fucking hate this person, and I feel like I never want to see them again, and I'm grossed out.'

I feel like sex scenes that have all those prongs... Like, things that are just hot and heavy, I feel like that's really only one degree of the sexual gamut, and I think Gregg nails that really well. I felt so comfortable with Olivia and Cooper. A lot of actors say the sex seems so technical, and it's really awkward. It didn't feel awkward at all. We've all stripped down, and it was just like hanging out with the boys. It felt so natural, weirdly."

For more on the upcoming film, check out the full conversation in the video above, with a time index below, where Araki, Hoffman, Wonders, and Gooding talk about I Want Your Sex and all things movies.

00:30 - I Want Your Sex Is a Must-See In a Packed Theater
01:22 - Gregg Araki Originally Received a Comedic 50 Shades of Grey Script
04:53 - Cooper Hoffman Took a Chance on Gregg Araki’s World
08:32 - Mason Gooding on “Running the Gamut” of Genre
10:34 - Chase Sui Wonders Isn’t Afraid of “Ugly as Hell”
12:55 - The Crew Greenlight the Projects of Their Dreams
17:34 - The I Want Your Sex Team Plays Collider’s Bracket Challenge!

Special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Arby’s, for making the Collider Studio happen at the Arby’s Cinema Center and keeping us all fed with their selection of curly fries, mozzarella sticks, and tastes of their new Italian Beef Dip, a new limited-time sandwich that brings Chicago-style flavors to its menu. In addition, thanks to our supporting partners, including Hendrick’s Gin, Sommsation - The Wine Company, Peroni USA, neau water, Bernier, and our producing partner Twenty35 Agency.